AGILE - Aggregators as diGital Intermediaries in Local Electricity markets: EPSRC/ESC Follow on Funding

Completed

Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Energy Models)
Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution)
Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Energy Economics)
Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Environmental, social and economic impacts)

Basic and strategic applied research

SOCIAL SCIENCES (Business and Management Studies)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting
Systems Analysis related to energy R&D (Energy modelling)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Other sociological economical and environmental impact of energy)

Dr LE Varga
School of Management
Cranfield University

Standard

EPSRC

01 December 2018

31 May 2021

30 months

£719,499

Energy

East of England

Energy : Energy

Dr LE Varga, School of Management, Cranfield University

Professor DW Bunn, Management Science and Operations, London Business School
Professor J Clarkson, Engineering, University of Cambridge
Dr S Galloway, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde
Dr Y Hu, School of Management, Cranfield University
Dr J Irvine, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde

Project Contact, Electron
Project Contact, SunContrract, Slovenia
Project Contact, Scottish Power Ltd
Project Contact, National Grid plc
Project Contact, UK Power Networks
Project Contact, ELEXON Ltd
Project Contact, IBM United Kingdom Ltd
Project Contact, Ofgem

There has been a huge investment in micro generation from both customers and small scale providers, particularly in residential PV. Individual participation of these assets (offers to buy/sell/store energy) by micro/domestic scale agents in local, distributed electricity markets is currently a significant business and technological challenge in the UK's large-scale energy systems. A solution to enable energy trading between small scale generators and consumers that provides a compelling business case for storage and further penetration of embedded renewables is essential.New aggregators, that is, new market players who are highly adaptable in terms of dynamically organising Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), are emerging to provide a retail service to distributed groups of customers who could not manage to act in the energy market on their own. These aggregators would deal with requirements of the wider energy system by utilising diverse and multiple low carbon and renewable technologies for generation and storage to provide local/micro-grid solutions. However, there are significant barriers to the emergence of such entities which can be overcome by adoption of contemporary digital technologies.Our AGILE proposal sets out an integrated digital solution which can deliver suitable mechanisms to allow aggregators to offer the wider energy market bundled DER services of particular duration and value. To allow this, the preferences and descriptions of DERs, which form smart, micro contracts, will be articulated using an agent based model. Bids and offers will be enabled through integration with Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) which will provide a trustworthy implementation of the scheme through a distributed database trusted by all agents. AGILE will examine the synergies between several permissioned, public, and hybrid DLTs as there are key questions about which type of ledger and related services is best for this elastic aggregator approach.An optimisation model will recommend particular configurations of DERs satisfying several portfolio optimisation strategies (financial, environmental and social welfare). The validation of preferred configurations of DERs is an essential step to ensure the feasibility of DER incorporation and a digitised, stylised IEEE network will be integrated into the digital solution to achieve this. Validation using a range of realistic network topologies will be performed to evaluate the effect on aggregator business models.

07/01/19