Extended Residential Power Management Interface for Flexibility Communication and Uncertainty Reduction for Flexibility System Operators

Abstract

The high importance of demand-side management for the stability of future smart grids came into focus years ago and is today undisputed among a wide spectrum of energy market participants, and within the research community. The increasing development of communication infrastructure, in tandem with the rising transparency of power grids, supports the efforts for deploying demand-side management applications. While it is then accepted that demand-side management will yield positive contributions, it remains challenging to identify, communicate, and access available flexibility to the flexibility managers. The knowledge about the system potential is essential to determine impacts of control and adjustment signals, and employ temporarily required demand-side flexibility to ensure power grid stability. The aim of this article is to introduce a methodology to determine and communicate local flexibility potential of end-user energy systems to flexibility managers for short-term access. The presented approach achieves a reliable calculation of flexibility, a standardized data aggregation, and a secure communication. With integration into an existing system architecture, the general applicability is outlined with a use case scenario for one end-user energy system. The approach yields a transparent short-term flexibility potential within the flexibility operator system.