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Novel Developments in Energy Resources Management, Distribution Systems, Microgrids and Energy Communities: Volume II

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A1: Smart Grids and Microgrids".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 March 2023) | Viewed by 13083

Special Issue Editors

INESC-ID, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico-IST, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: smart grids; electricity markets; energy resource management; distributed power generation; smart power grids; battery-powered vehicles; distribution networks; electric vehicle charging; power distribution economics; power distribution operational planning; power system management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC-TEC), Centre for Power and Energy Systems, Campus da FEUP, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, nº378, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: energy markets; energy resource management; distributed power generation; distribution network management; optimal power flow; electric vehicle management; power system management; multienergy systems; optimization under uncertainty; distributed optimization; peer-to-peer markets; prosumer integration in the market; blockchain; artificial intelligence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Electrical Energy, Engineering Faculty, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora 36036-330, Brazil
Interests: distributed energy sources; plug-in vehicle charging; storage systems; smart grids; distribution system management; electricity markets; energy economics; power system planning; power system operation; applied optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are glad to share the great success of our Special Issue “Novel Developments in Energy Resources Management, Distribution Systems, Microgrids and Energy Communities”.

We now seek to launch the second volume of this Special Issue “Novel Developments in Energy Resources Management, Distribution Systems, Microgrids and Energy Communities: Volume II”

The fast development and integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) are changing the management and operation of power systems. Currently, more coordination between the owner of the resource, resource operator, and system operator is needed to ensure the required quality of service. The emergence of prosumers and aggregators, such as virtual power plants, fleet operators, or microgrids, has introduced a new level of management in power systems. Additionally, new regulation frameworks are incentivizing the creation of energy communities, federated power plants, collective self-consumption, local markets, and groups for balancing reserve. This new paradigm imposes the use of new methodologies in long-term and operational planning, and real-time operation, allowing better management of the existing resources and more coordination between actors.

This Special Issue will focus on algorithms, models, methods, technologies, and applications that foster improvements in the management of DERs, taking into consideration better coordination with actors and different business models. Potential topics include but are not limited to DER optimization, peer-to-peer trading, energy business models, actor coordination, microgrids, energy communities, federated power plants, virtual power plants, fleet operators, system operation, flexible management, demand response, ICT infrastructures, and the use of distributed ledger (e.g., blockchain) in energy services and trading mechanisms.

Dr. Hugo Morais
Dr. Tiago Soares
Prof. Dr. Bruno Henriques Dias
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Distributed energy resources
  • Microgrids
  • Energy communities
  • Virtual power plants
  • Federated power plants
  • Distribution system
  • Energy markets
  • Electricity markets
  • Energy management system
  • Multienergy systems

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 2051 KiB  
Article
PROCSIM: An Open-Source Simulator to Generate Energy Community Power Demand and Generation Scenarios
by Nuno Velosa, Eduardo Gomes, Hugo Morais and Lucas Pereira
Energies 2023, 16(4), 1611; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en16041611 - 06 Feb 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2148
Abstract
Reducing our carbon footprint is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity in the current millennium. In the last few years, researchers have focused their attention on balancing the demand and supply, thereby allowing better management of renewable energy resources. In this regard, [...] Read more.
Reducing our carbon footprint is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity in the current millennium. In the last few years, researchers have focused their attention on balancing the demand and supply, thereby allowing better management of renewable energy resources. In this regard, many energy management strategies have been developed. Nevertheless, testing, evaluating, and comparing such approaches in multiple scenarios, and above all, assessing their generalization, is currently a hard, or even impossible, task. Furthermore, analyzing the impact of such strategies in Energy Communitys (ECs) is an underexplored task. This is due to the lack of existing EC datasets and simulators that allow users to evaluate and compare their approaches. Although there are some tools to generate demand and production profiles, they are all developed with a single purpose. To address these challenges, PROCSIM is presented: an open-source simulator designed especially to create energy community datasets for multiple purposes—in particular, to test and evaluate different algorithms and models. It includes integration with a consumption-profiles generator, tools to simulate Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and wind production, a module that generates an EC dataset, and finally, a set of metrics to evaluate the generated community. To conclude, a case study comprised of two experiments is presented. The first experiment shows how an EC dataset can be created using PROCSIM. In the second experiment, an exemplification of how this dataset can be used to evaluate an optimization algorithm is provided, namely, to optimize the control of a battery. Ultimately, it is shown that the simulator can generate energy community power demand and generation scenarios. The scenarios can be fully customized by the user, considering different sizes (power capacity) and numbers of assets, and diverse generation/consumption characteristics. The datasets generated by PROCSIM can be useful for different purposes, such as optimal scheduling of EC generation resources and consumption flexibility, and for designing battery energy storage systems. Full article
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17 pages, 2101 KiB  
Article
Economic Analysis of a Hydrogen Power Plant in the Portuguese Electricity Market
by Luís Manuel Rodrigues, Tiago Soares, Igor Rezende, João Paulo Fontoura and Vladimiro Miranda
Energies 2023, 16(3), 1506; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en16031506 - 03 Feb 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2179
Abstract
Hydrogen is regarded as a flexible energy carrier with multiple applications across several sectors. For instance, it can be used in industrial processes, transports, heating, and electrical power generation. Green hydrogen, produced from renewable sources, can have a crucial role in the pathway [...] Read more.
Hydrogen is regarded as a flexible energy carrier with multiple applications across several sectors. For instance, it can be used in industrial processes, transports, heating, and electrical power generation. Green hydrogen, produced from renewable sources, can have a crucial role in the pathway towards global decarbonization. However, the success of green hydrogen production ultimately depends on its economic sustainability. In this context, this work evaluates the economic performance of a hydrogen power plant participating in the electricity market and supplying multiple hydrogen consumers. The analysis includes technical and economical details of the main components of the hydrogen power plant. Its operation is simulated using six different scenarios, which admit the production of either grey or green hydrogen. The scenarios used for the analysis include data from the Iberian electricity market for the Portuguese hub. An important conclusion is that the combination of multiple services in a hydrogen power plant has a positive effect on its economic performance. However, as of today, consumers who would wish to acquire green hydrogen would have to be willing to pay higher prices to compensate for the shorter periods of operation of hydrogen power plants and for their intrinsic losses. Nonetheless, an increase in green hydrogen demand based on a greater environmental awareness can lead to the need to not only build more of these facilities, but also to integrate more services into them. This could promote the investment in hydrogen-related technologies and result in changes in capital and operating costs of key components of these plants, which are necessary to bring down production costs. Full article
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15 pages, 282 KiB  
Article
Consumer Attitudes to the Smart Home Technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT)
by Elena Korneeva, Nina Olinder and Wadim Strielkowski
Energies 2021, 14(23), 7913; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en14237913 - 25 Nov 2021
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3904
Abstract
This paper focuses on the consumer preferences for the so-called “smart homes” (also known as “smart houses”) which represent a novel addition and a product of the on-going digitalization and the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT). The major scientific contribution of [...] Read more.
This paper focuses on the consumer preferences for the so-called “smart homes” (also known as “smart houses”) which represent a novel addition and a product of the on-going digitalization and the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT). The major scientific contribution of our study is the empirical model build on the data from the online questionnaire conducted with randomly selected respondents (N = 523) from four European Union (EU) countries and Russia. Even though our results are subject to limitations (no Southern of Northern European countries are included in the scope of this research, which might have yielded different results due to the differences in wealth of citizens and climate in comparison to the Central and Eastern European countries or Germany), they demonstrate that the users included in our sample generally feel inclined to the smart homes technologies and perceive them as a plausible means for improving the safety and security of their lives. On the other hand, some respondents from our sample expressed their concerns over the cybersecurity and technology dependence issues associated with smart homes. It is also apparent that younger respondents (aged 16–35) featured in our research are more worried about their personal data being monitored and analyzed (with a pending threat of leakages). All these results are original and constitute an important scientific value-added to the field of research in smart home technologies and their acceptance by the general public. We demonstrate that the further enhancement of smart homes, and the increase of their popularity and affordability among the customers both in the Central and Eastern European countries and beyond, might depend on the development of the smart grids which these smart homes are an integral part of. The reliability of the smart systems constitutes the key element for achieving the satisfaction of the smart homes residents, and hence needs to be achieved and secured in an effective way. This would ensure the right mix and balance of energy security and efficiency for all customers involved in this process. Full article
19 pages, 1787 KiB  
Article
Stratified Control Applied to a Three-Phase Unbalanced Low Voltage Distribution Grid in a Local Peer-to-Peer Energy Community
by Bharath Varsh Rao, Mark Stefan, Roman Schwalbe, Roman Karl, Friederich Kupzog and Martin Kozek
Energies 2021, 14(11), 3290; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en14113290 - 04 Jun 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1935
Abstract
This paper presents control relationships between the low voltage distribution grid and flexibilities in a peer-to-peer local energy community using a stratified control strategy. With the increase in a diverse set of distributed energy resources and the next generation of loads such as [...] Read more.
This paper presents control relationships between the low voltage distribution grid and flexibilities in a peer-to-peer local energy community using a stratified control strategy. With the increase in a diverse set of distributed energy resources and the next generation of loads such as electric storage, vehicles and heat pumps, it is paramount to maintain them optimally to guarantee grid security and supply continuity. Local energy communities are being introduced and gaining traction in recent years to drive the local production, distribution, consumption and trading of energy. The control scheme presented in this paper involves a stratified controller with grid and flexibility layers. The grid controller consists of a three-phase unbalanced optimal power flow using the holomorphic embedding load flow method wrapped around a genetic algorithm and various flexibility controllers, using three-phase unbalanced model predictive control. The control scheme generates active and reactive power set-points at points of common couplings where flexibilities are connected. The grid controller’s optimal power flow can introduce additional grid support functionalities to further increase grid stability. Flexibility controllers are recommended to actively track the obtained set-points from the grid controller, to ensure system-level optimization. Blockchain enables this control scheme by providing appropriate data exchange between the layers. This scheme is applied to a real low voltage rural grid in Austria, and the result analysis is presented. Full article
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Review

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24 pages, 3180 KiB  
Review
State of the Art Monte Carlo Method Applied to Power System Analysis with Distributed Generation
by Tiago P. Abud, Andre A. Augusto, Marcio Z. Fortes, Renan S. Maciel and Bruno S. M. C. Borba
Energies 2023, 16(1), 394; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en16010394 - 29 Dec 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2086
Abstract
Traditionally, electric power systems are subject to uncertainties related to equipment availability, topological changes, faults, disturbances, behaviour of load, etc. In particular, the dissemination of distributed generation (DG), especially those based on renewable sources, has introduced new challenges to power systems, adding further [...] Read more.
Traditionally, electric power systems are subject to uncertainties related to equipment availability, topological changes, faults, disturbances, behaviour of load, etc. In particular, the dissemination of distributed generation (DG), especially those based on renewable sources, has introduced new challenges to power systems, adding further randomness to the management of this segment. In this context, stochastic analysis could support planners and operators in a more appropriate manner than traditional deterministic analysis, since the former is able to properly model the power system uncertainties. The objective of this work is to present recent achievements of one of the most important techniques for stochastic analysis, the Monte Carlo Method (MCM), to study the technical and operational aspects of electric networks with DG. Besides covering the DG topic itself, this paper also addresses emerging themes related to smart grids and new technologies, such as electric vehicles, storage, demand response, and electrothermal hybrid systems. This review encompasses more than 90 recent articles, arranged according to the MCM application and the type of analysis of power systems. The majority of the papers reviewed apply the MCM within stochastic optimization, indicating a possible trend. Full article
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