A Decentralised Transactive Energy Market Considering Physical System Constraints

Abstract

Increasing levels of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are expected to play a key role in achieving global electricity decarbonisation goals, providing both a challenge and an opportunity for the electricity industry. Conventional approaches such as Net Energy Metering (NEM) have been questioned regarding their effectiveness in properly rewarding DERs, and larger efforts around the integration of DERs into wholesale markets do not address potential value streams at the distribution system level. Local energy markets leveraging direct Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading have been proposed as a solution, which can increase prosumer participation in lower cost and more reliable supply of energy to consumers. Many approaches have been proposed to determine the optimal dispatch of distributed resources; however, a gap remains in the research to date on how to efficiently allow for prosumer decision autonomy while ensuring that the physical layer of the power system is considered.

This thesis proposes a decentralised transactive solution that retains prosumer negotiation and decision autonomy, while using network operator and market determined prices to allocate limited system resources for a feasible, locally optimal system state. Peer-to-Utility (P2U) transactions are added to existing P2P energy frameworks to obtain transactive local peer decision criteria considering Peer-Centric (PC) and System-Centric (SC) objectives. Peers are able to interact with wholesale electricity market derived prices through P2U transactions, allowing for consideration of net export value in welfare maximising decisions. The proposed approach includes a split transaction fee pricing mechanism for virtual prosumer interactions that considers the networks characteristics such as topology and operational constraints to ensure consideration of the physical layer in peer decision making. In addition to pricing mechanisms for coupling the virtual and physical layers, a congestion clearing process is proposed, which coordinates with the decentralised transaction matching process and the Network Usage Charges (NUCs) to ensure efficient allocation of network capacity.

Previously reported distribution networks are used to compare the transaction decisions, economic performance, and system performance of the proposed solution with existing approaches. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in ensuring system feasible, locally optimal transaction sets with prioritisation of local peers.