Evaluation of the scalability of an energy market for Smart Grid neighborhoods

Abstract

The electric power grid is undergoing fundamental changes in light of the current focus on distributed generation, and in particular renewable generation (e.g., solar and wind). As a result, new methodologies and technologies are needed to effectively coordinate and make optimal use of the these resources. A distribution-system level energy market offers the potential to address this issue by providing an efficient mechanism for the pricing and allocation of resources. Market participants (e.g., households, ESCos, asset managers etc.) can apply economically driven strategies to trade energy while reacting to current and local levels of production and consumption. We evaluate here such a local neighborhood market and investigate its scalability under different numbers of participants and different penetrations photo-voltaic (PV) generation. The evaluation is carried out by simulating market operations under realistic production and consumption conditions. Results showed that the proposed market model scales well against both parameters.