Impacts of community energy trading on low voltage distribution networks

M. Nour, J.P. Chaves, M. Troncia, A. Ali, A. Sánchez

IEEE Access Vol. 11, pp. 50412 - 50430

Summary:

The wide spread of distributed energy resources (DERs) enabled the transformation of the passive consumer to an active prosumer. One of the promising approaches for optimal management of DERs and maximizing benefits for the community and prosumers is community energy trading (CET). CET gives the prosumers the flexibility and freedom to trade electricity within the neighborhood and maximize their economic benefits besides maximizing local consumption of renewable energy sources generation. Despite the economic benefits of CET for individuals and the whole community, it could cause impacts on the low voltage distribution network (LVDN). Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive evaluation of the potential impacts of CET on LVDN. This study compared CET with the home energy management system (HEMS) regarding community operation costs and interaction with the retailer. Furthermore, this paper focused on assessing the impacts of CET between prosumers on the phase unbalance of LVDN. Moreover, the impacts on transformer loading, lines loading, and voltage deviations are assessed. Compared to the corresponding HEMS scenarios, the results demonstrate that CET reduces the community electricity cost by up to 31%. CET resulted in better self-consumption by reducing the exports to the retailer by 93% and better self-sufficiency by covering up to 54% of energy demand by community DERs. However, CET resulted in increasing the community peak demand, accordingly, higher impacts on the LVDN. The transformer is lightly loaded in all scenarios. CET resulted in limit violations in some lines, whereas most are lightly loaded. The voltage magnitude and voltage unbalance exceeded the acceptable limits at some nodes of the LVDN.

Spanish layman's summary:

El estudio evalúa los impactos de las comunidades energéticas sobre las congestiones de transformadores y líneas, así como problemas de tensiones. Además, el estudio compara el funcionamiento de las comunidades energéticas con la gestión individual de las cargas respecto a los costes de funcionamiento de la comunidad y la interacción con el comercializador.

 

English layman's summary:

The study assesses the impacts of the community energy trading on transformer loading, lines loading, voltage deviation, and voltage unbalance of low voltage distribution networks. Moreover, the study compares the performance of community energy trading with the home energy management system regarding community operation costs and interaction with the retailer.

Keywords: Local electricity market, energy community trading, energy community, transactive energy, distributed energy resources, electric vehicle, energy storage.

JCR Impact Factor and WoS quartile: 3,400 - Q2 (2023)

DOI reference: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3278090

Published on paper: 2023.

Published on-line: May 2023.

Citation:
M. Nour, J.P. Chaves, M. Troncia, A. Ali, A. Sánchez, Impacts of community energy trading on low voltage distribution networks. IEEE Access. Vol. 11, pp. 50412 - 50430, 2023. [Online: May 2023]