Abstract
Technological developments are pushing for new solutions based upon massive integration of renewable electricity generation in networks already facing many challenges. This paper presents a novel approach to managing the energy transfer towards prosumers making use of smart management of local energy storage. The proposed design (including storage dimensioning) is based on several operating scenarios in which the prosumer might operate as: (i) a “load only” entity (from a grid perspective), thus exhibiting investment resiliency against regulatory changes and high energy efficiency; or (ii) a prosumer, in case regulatory opportunistic profit might be available. This can be realized within a newly proposed Uni-directional Resilient Consumer (UniRCon) architecture. The major aim of the proposed architecture is to achieve optimal self-consumption while avoiding curtailment even in a changing regulatory environment like, for example, the total lack of incentives for generation based on renewable energy sources (RES). One of the major advantages of the proposed architecture consists in the adaptability to changes in the regulatory and market environment. The term resilience is used with multiple meanings: (a) the prosumer’s financial resilience against regulatory changes when investment calculations assume no-grid injections; (b) the prosumer’s technical resilience, with electrical design based on standalone operation; (c) the resilience of clusters of interconnected end-user installations with enabled community-level electricity exchange, independent of the existing main grid supply; (d) the contribution to grid resilience, by enabling AC microgrid (MG) operation in island mode when large portions of the grid are formed by clusters of UniRCon prosumers (the ease of islanding segmentation of the local grid in case of emergencies). For proof of concept, three use-cases are detailed: (i) photovoltaic (PV) installations connected behind the meter; (ii) PV and storage available and controllable behind the meter; and (iii) the UniRCon architecture. The three use-cases are then compared and assessed for four near-future timelines as starting points for the investment. Numerical simulations show the attractiveness of the UniRCon solution in what concerns both system operation costs and supply resilience. Savings are expressed as opportunity savings arising from difference in tariffs while charging and discharging the storage unit and due to the avoidance of curtailment, as well as special taxes for the connection of PV (depending on regulatory environment). An extension of the UniRCon concept is presented also at community scale, with neighbourhood energy exchange inside a resilient cluster.
Highlights
We show that this solution, named hereon as Uni-directional Resilient Consumer (UniRCon), addresses the load-generation gap described in Figure 1 by including the costs and benefits of technical and investment resilience
If the distribution system operator (DSO) introduces a tariff for increasing resilience, the difference in UniRCon savings compared with storage behind the meter increases to 4.8%, suggesting that it is better to invest in local immunity/resilience to mitigate DSO interruptions; it is possible that €0.1/day for increasing DSO resilience may not bring similar results at the DSO level, because of the legacy AC design of the grid, which may need more complicated and expensive measures such as microgrid technologies, including grid-based storage
A good design in dimensioning UniRCon internal generation + storage resources allows keeping it as anThe equivalent consumer—which is a good situation for a DSO claiming for their paper introduces the UniRCon architecture whereby prosumers owningaslocal electricity distributioncapacity grid
Summary
Nowadays, electricity electricity grids grids are are facing facing multiple multiple challenges challenges following following growth growth in in the the share share of of renewable-based electricity simultaneously promoted with the dynamic evolution of the energy renewable-based electricity simultaneously promoted with the dynamic evolution of the energy markets, energy services. We propose an analysis from the viewpoint of a “load only” prosumer, with several key features: It offers better customer resilience, an improvement in stability and predictability relevant for low-voltage level (LV) network operators, and less expensive grid connection, because it transforms a prosumer in an all-time consumer We show that this solution, named hereon as UniRCon, addresses the load-generation gap described in Figure 1 by including the costs and benefits of technical and investment resilience. This solution is independent of any future constraints (technical or regulatory) applied to the local-generation units, remaining compatible with the classic design of a network tailored for unidirectional energy flow. This architecture can be extended to a number of energy prosumers, which can increase efficiency and resilience through the proposed UniRCon architecture at prosumer level or in a UniRCon cluster
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