A novel approach on the provision of distributed energy resource capabilities

Abstract

The increasing dissemination of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) will have a significant impact on the planning and operation of the electricity grid. Many of these DERs have operational constraints e.g. weather conditions or self-sufficiency of resources or interactions within a multimodal environment. Today, established concepts on Virtual Power Plants aggregation often lack the possibility of automated, standardized and near real-time reconfiguration in case of failures or planning issues with these volatile DERs. In spite of standardization approaches a standardized description model for energy resources and their capabilities which allows aggregators to automatically find contributing or substituting DERs is lacking. The recent development in the electricity grid towards increasing Information and Communication capabilities can be used for a large scale information and allocation system for energy resources. Such a registry for energy resource capabilities will provide the opportunity for DERs to promote actual information about their capabilities based on forecasts and operational plans. Aggregators can select appropriate resources for their VPP configuration and reconfiguration while system operators can e.g. observe the grid status and the allocated capacities of all active DERs registered at the registry. In order to achieve the goals and to optimize the usage of especially renewable DERs, three main research question have to be addressed: (1) The definition of a standardized, abstracted and generalized description model for DER capabilities. (2) The interoperability and communicational requirements for such energy services. (3) Identifying the current applications and potential contributions to the development of future energy markets.