Stability and Performance of Coalitions of Prosumers Through Diversification in the Smart Grid

Abstract

Achieving a successful energetic transition through a smarter and greener electricity grid is a major goal for the 21st century. It is assumed that such smart grids will be characterized by bidirectional electricity flows coupled with the use of small renewable generators and a proper efficient information system. All these bricks might enable end users to take part in the grid stability by injecting power, or by shaping their consumption against financial compensation. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that forms coalitions of agents, called prosumers, that both produce and consume. It is designed to be used by aggregators that aim at selling the aggregated surplus of production of the prosumers they control. We rely on real weather data sampled across stations of a given territory in order to simulate realistic production and consumption patterns for each prosumer. This approach enables us to capture geographical correlations among the agents while preserving the diversity due to different behaviors. As aggregators are bound to the grid operator by a contract, they seek to maximize their offer while minimizing their risk. The proposed graph based algorithm takes the underlying correlation structure of the agents into account and outputs coalitions with both high productivity and low variability. We show then that the resulting diversified coalitions are able to generate higher benefits on a constrained energy market, and are more resilient to random failures of the agents.