IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2021 - 76

Studies show that there is a growing need
for more flexibility and active stakeholder
involvement at all levels.
affected by service provisioning to the electricity system.
Depending on the case, stakeholders may procure or provide
gas, heat, and cooling energy. In some cases, they may also
provide services to gas, heating, and cooling systems. This
can lead to opportunities and benefits but also constraints
and barriers. Multicarrier market integration, such as innovative
designs for day-ahead multicarrier energy markets, is
needed to increase synergies between different energy carriers
(e.g., electricity, gas, and heating/cooling), taking into
account the potential coupling between their respective markets.
Different market designs may be proposed and compared
with one another.
Physical Systems
MESs are the physical providers of flexibility through the
control of their technological components and the optimization
of their operations. They may have different purposes
and types of " cross-sector " technologies and energy carrier
table 1. Selected electricity system requirements
and services.
Requirements Services
Balancing and
frequency
control
Provision of reserves for transmission system
operators
* Frequency containment reserve (or
primary frequency regulation)
* Automatic frequency restoration reserve
(or secondary frequency regulation)
* Manual frequency restoration reserve,
replacement reserve, and dedicated
additional balancing mechanisms in some
countries (or tertiary frequency regulation)
Congestion
management
Energy trades
Redispatching mechanisms and active power
control at transmission and distribution
levels
Energy procurement mechanisms and
markets
* Day-ahead energy trades/market
* Intraday energy trades/market
System
adequacy
Capacity requirement mechanisms
implemented in some European countries:
capacity markets (with other revenue
streams) and strategic reserves (without
other revenue streams)*
*Generally, participation in strategic reserve mechanisms
does not allow participation in any other market, whereas
involvement in capacity markets does not prevent activity in
other markets and therefore other revenue streams.
76
ieee power & energy magazine
networks (electricity, gas, heat, and cooling). Depending on
the case and on their size, these technologies can be located
in large industrial, commercial, and public sites; distributed
at consumers' premises; and based in substations of relevant
carrier networks. Additionally, a multi-energy operation
may rely on an energy management system (EMS) or an
equivalent device, which performs local aggregation at the
level of the site. The use of an EMS mainly aims at optimizing
the integrated system process and the supply of its multiple
energy demands. However, as an extension, it can also
implement specific control strategies to maximize the flexibility
that may be made available to the electricity system.
Given the variety of potential applications, a general
framework for the technoeconomic assessment of MESs
should be demonstrated on a diverse set of real-world
plants characterized by the interactions of different types
of energy carriers and use cases. Case studies of distribution
network-connected plants that can provide bottom-up
flexibility and have been explored in the MAGNITUDE
project are presented in Table 2. The table also describes
improvement strategies that have been discussed with plant
owners and tested to enhance the provision of flexibility.
Further, it summarizes relevant use cases that have been
studied and consist of the provision of selected services
under a current configuration and after implementing proposed
improvement options. In general, similar upgrades
might be relevant to a large class of MESs that have similar
features and issues.
Aggregation Platform
MESs connected to the electricity distribution network may
meet barriers to accessing some markets (for instance, due
to minimum bid sizes and technical limitations), as in other
cases of flexibility related to distributed energy resources.
Also, the provision of flexibility is not MESs' core business.
It is thus essential to study the potential benefits of pooling
the flexibility that MESs could provide " bottom-up " through
an aggregation platform. As its key functions, the platform
collects requests and signals from the electricity market and
service buyers, aggregates the flexibility of the MES portfolio,
and proposes offers to electricity markets and service
buyers. The aggregator is a so-called deregulated player,
i.e., a party in competition with other market participants.
The aggregator role can be played by any such deregulated
entity, for instance, a supplier, balance-responsible party,
producer, or separate stakeholder.
july/august 2021
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2021
