SMART ENERGY: BUSINESS POLICY AND REGULATION THE SMART DISTRIBUTION GRID: INTEGRATING ACTIVE, FLEXIBLE AND RESPONSIVE TERTIARY PROSUMERS By Konstantinos Tsatsakis, Hypertech Briefly put: The main aim of the INERTIA project is to introduce the ‘Internet of Things/Services’ principles within the distribution grid control and demand side management operations. Demand capacity and flexibility set a critical grid operation performance factor with shared profit opportunities. Inflexible demand, along with the increasing presence of distributed intermittent energy sources, poses significant challenges for utilities and their ability to balance the grid. Worldwide RES capacity has increased above 50% (approx. 240GW) between 2004 and 2007 while renewable power capacity worldwide reached an estimated 1 320GW in 2010. Moreover, if the EU 20-20-20 objectives are met, 75% of the new renewable capacity will be intermittent and hard-to- forecast, causing critical challenges in grid management at all levels (distribution, transmission and cross-border). and respective load flexibility. This allows for implementing reliable, effective and optimally coordinated local demand side management strategies within the critical response time limits; set by grid operations, incorporating various levels of management and control as well as different semantic views and clusters. Demand response (DR) aims to exploit consumer flexibility in response to these that further set conditions while increasing consumer participation in the competitive energy market. Developments in DR vary substantially across Europe reflecting national conditions and triggered by different policies. The EU has expressed a high interest to this field and many research projects are being undertaken to manage business models and strategies for the optimal implementation of DR scenarios. Within INERTIA, DERs form dynamic clusters self-organised networks of intelligent active nodes that efficiently distribute and balance global and local intelligence. This self-organised overlay network allows for the seamless management and control of the active grid as well as efficient coordination between suppliers (traditional and RES) and prosumers (local generation and consumption). To this end, the overall control network on the highest level consists of two types of peers/hubs, while agent sub- components run on both hubs, underlying the self-organised distributed grid and load control operations: INERTIA learns from the progress of the existing efforts in demand side management. The framework allows for intelligent demand aggregation and dynamic demand on much higher levels than those of individual appliances. Decentralised and automated energy performance optimisation strategies performed on a local level lead to the creation of more energy efficient prosumer hubs and clusters that actively contribute to overall grid performance. In addition, the proposed framework provides methods and tools for the detailed and robust analysis and modelling of individual and aggregated prosumer load profiles 94 The INERTIA framework adopts the Internet of Things principles and extends DSM strategy operation by incorporating various types of distributed energy resources DERs instead of simple consumer loads. • Aggregator control hub: The aggregators manage the prosumer portfolio, trading with the market stakeholders on behalf of small customers. Aggregators gather, analyse and efficiently organise their customer load portfolio’s and define specific active demand (AD) strategies and services based on market needs. They act as an intermediary between suppliers and network operators and the different commercial and industrial (C&I) prosumers belonging to their portfolios. • Local control and automation hub: The local control hub corresponds to the level of building areas, buildings or building complexes. Local control actions and information are autonomously and automatically managed in real-time by the local control hub. This minimises the required interaction by the prosumers and ensures self-privacy and autonomy of tertiary buildings by delivering a self-learning building hub that models the building and occupancy operations (implicit or explicit occupant, prosumer profiling) as an active aspect of the building. Based on the high level distinction of roles, a conceptual architecture is presented in Figure 1 and a high level analysis of the main components is provided. Local control and automation hub The local control hub corresponds with the level of building areas by modelling the building and occupancy operations while interacting with the external environment on a continuous and real-time basis. The main components that consist of the INERTIA local hub approach are described in more detail below. Semantic based middleware INERTIA delivers semantically enhanced middleware for integrated management of the DER as well as the interfacing of individual and aggregated loads with the grid. The semantic middleware also comprises the standardised multi- directional communication and control interface of the local hub components with the distribution grid. The semantic middleware (based on the Hydra/LinkSmart middleware) establishes a seamless, transparent, and homogeneous interface to all sensor/actuator/metering cloud components (appliances, smart meters, various sensors etc.). What’s more, it provides on top of the cloud, appropriately defined semantic (virtual) devices (clusters of semantically enhanced components METERING INTERNATIONAL ISSUE - 4 | 2014