Esther Mengelkamp

A blockchain-based smart grid: towards sustainable local energy markets

The increasing amount of renewable energy sources in the energy system calls for new market approaches to price and distribute the volatile and decentralized generation. Local energy markets, on which consumers and prosumers can trade locally produced renewable generation directly within their community, balance generation and consumption locally in a decentralized approach. We present a comprehensive concept, market design and simulation of a local energy market between 100 residential households. Our approach is based on a distributed information and communication technology, i.e. a private blockchain, which underlines the decentralized nature of local energy markets. Thus, we provide energy prosumers and consumers with a decentralized market platform for trading local energy generation without the need of a central intermediary. Furthermore, we present a preliminary economic evaluation of the market mechanism and a research agenda for the technological evaluation of blockchain technology as the local energy market’s main information and communication technology.

Trading on local energy markets: A comparison of market designs and bidding strategies

Increasing renewable energy sources and innovative information and communication systems open up new challenges and opportunities to integrate distributed generation into the energy supply system. Formerly centralized energy systems need to be adapted to take full advantage of the immense potential of decentralized energy generation and smart, interconnected energy end users. We introduce a local electricity market on which prosumers and consumers of a community are able to trade electricity directly amongst each other. This local electricity market supports the local integration of renewable energy generation. It facilitates a local balance of energy supply and demand and hence reduces the need for extensive electricity transmission. We introduce, evaluate and compare two local market designs, a direct peer-to-peer market and a closed order book market, as well as two agent behaviors, zero-intelligence agents and intelligently bidding agents. We derive four scenarios by combining each market design with each agent behavior, respectively. All market scenarios offer similar economic advantages for the market participants. However, the peer-to-peer market with intelligent agents appears to be the most advantageous as it results in the lowest average overall electricity price.

A comprehensive modelling framework for demand side flexibility in smart grids

The increasing share of renewable energy generation in the electricity system comes with significant challenges, such as the volatility of renewable energy sources. To tackle those challenges, demand side management is a frequently mentioned remedy. However, measures of demand side management need a high level of flexibility to be successful. Although extensive research exists that describes, models and optimises various processes with flexible electrical demands, there is no unified notation. Additionally, most descriptions are very process-specific and cannot be generalised. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive modelling framework to mathematically describe demand side flexibility in smart grids while integrating a majority of constraints from different existing models. We provide a universally applicable modelling framework for demand side flexibility and evaluate its practicality by looking at how well Mixed-Integer Linear Program solvers are able to optimise the resulting models, if applied to artificially generated instances. From the evaluation, we derive that our model improves the performance of previous models while integrating additional flexibility characteristics.

The role of energy storage in local energy markets

To facilitate the integration of renewable electricity sources into the energy system, innovative market designs must be discussed. Local markets that are organized in a decentralized fashion can help to decrease the need for extensive investment in transmission capacity. To analyze such markets, this work presents an agent-based simulation study of a local peer-to-peer electricity market in a community. The market offers a decentralized marketplace for procuring electricity directly from local renewable generation. We evaluate the market efficiency in terms of the attained rate of self-consumption and the average electricity price depending on the number of potential trading partners in two scenarios: A local market without energy storage and a local market with a community energy storage. The results indicate that a community energy storage can substantially increase the markets efficiency.