Aggregation Effects For Microgrid Communities At Varying Sizes And Prosumer‐Consumer Ratios


Loading...

Date

2019-02

Publication Type

Conference Paper

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

Altmetric

Data

Abstract

Self-consumption is an increasingly economically attractive solution for electricity generated by distributed energy resources, which also reduces transmission losses, power line overload and grid instability. Yet, at single-building scale, production and demand do often not coincide. Microgrids are proposed as a means to trade surplus energy produced with local prosumers and consumers, to take advantage of complementary load profiles. Here we define a consumer as a single metered residential unit, a prosumer as a consumer with a photovoltaic system, which first uses the on-site energy generated prior to exporting the surplus, and the microgrid as a clearly defined number of both prosumers and consumers. In this article, we systematically analyze to what extent varying microgrid sizes and prosumer-consumer ratios affect local self-consumption and self-sufficiency rates. To that end, we developed a simulation model that uses real-world load profiles from 4190 residential buildings as input data. We find that the prosumer-to-consumer ratio is more important than the absolute microgrid size, for microgrids sizes greater than ten. The results also indicate that prosumer-to-consumer ratios in the range of 40%-60% have the best performance. Each simulation is also compared to the baseline scenario of a stand-alone prosumer, which shows significantly better self-consumption ratios and self-sufficiency ratios for microgrids due to aggregation effects. Finally, this work may also be used as a reference to design residential microgrid communities for various prosumer-consumer compositions and various production-to-demand ratios.

Publication status

published

Book title

Renewable Energy Integration with Mini/Microgrid

Volume

159

Pages / Article No.

346 - 351

Publisher

Elsevier

Event

Applied Energy Symposium and Forum, Renewable Energy Integration with Mini/Microgrids (REM 2018)

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

Microgrids; Self-consumption; Self-sufficiency; Prosumers; Aggregation effects

Organisational unit

03276 - Schmitt, Gerhard (emeritus) / Schmitt, Gerhard (emeritus) check_circle
03681 - Fleisch, Elgar / Fleisch, Elgar check_circle

Notes

Conference lecture on 29 September 2018.

Funding

Related publications and datasets

Is part of: