IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2021 - 42

This new consumer and network partnership is a win for both
sides, with consumers getting a new source of revenue and the
network having a less-expensive source of network support.
consumers getting a new source of revenue and the network
having a less-expensive source of network support.
The three-year project, which commenced in 2016,
trialed new technology for coordinating consumers with
the network and mechanisms for sharing in cost savings
and then analyzed the social implication of these changes.
While demand-side coordination has been previously
used to manage network peaks, the project had a unique
contribution in accurately optimizing the network utilization
and exploring a game-theoretic approach to rewarding
consumers.
Investigating these ideas has highlighted not only the
potential in a messy real-world setting but also the challenges
to implementation and adoption. Importantly, the implications
reach well beyond this one small island community
since technologies like this will be able to help resolve barriers
to further electrification and the integration of renewable
energy in power systems. To understand this, however, it is
important to first consider the scale of the changes already
in motion.
Context
The electricity grid is undergoing a rapid transformation
driven by the uptake of renewable generation, distributed
energy resources (DERs), and the digitization of power
system operation, underpinned by information and communication
technologies and ubiquitous computing. In
conventional power systems, customers were simply power
consumers, and energy flow was one way from generation
to load. Advances in rooftop solar and smart-metering technology
have enabled consumers to increasingly generate and
sell power, thus becoming prosumers, resulting in two-way
power and information flows.
Australia is at the forefront of customer uptake of DERs,
with more than one in five houses across the country having
rooftop solar photovoltaics (PVs). This significant
change cannot be supported by the current grid architecture
designed for one-way energy flows, as it can result in large
swings in voltages and thermal overloading of the infrastructure.
The situation is particularly critical at the distribution
level, where parts of the network have already reached the
limits of the network's ability to host DERs. To deal with
the issue, distribution network service providers (DNSPs), as
distribution companies are known in Australia, require PV
inverters to curtail excessive PV generation.
At the same time, an increasing number of PV installations
come with battery storage. The trend is expected
to accelerate as the technology cost drops further and new
revenue streams become available. This offers PV owners
an opportunity to make better use of generation that would
otherwise be curtailed. When battery
charging is optimized with
an intelligent energy management
system (EMS), batteries can provide
grid support services while
maximizing PV self-consumption
for the user.
To leverage the increased
figure 1. Bruny Island is off the southern coast of Tasmania, Australia. (Source: Australian
National University; used with permission.)
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ieee power & energy magazine
flexibility of customers, distribution
companies can borrow concepts
similar to those used by virtual
power plants, which combine,
as a virtual unit, anywhere from
a few up to thousands of prosumers
to participate, at scale, in
conventional markets. Generally,
however, virtual power plants have
not been designed to consider distribution
networks. A more balanced
approach is needed that
factors in the preferences of customers,
coordinates these with
july/august 2021

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2021

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