Innovative CONsumer aggregation to improve demand response and Tariff design for Energy and Services Transactions

CONTEST explores business models and market structures for intensive and efficient use of distributed energy resources in local energy communities, considering the interaction with current and future wholesale markets. The project also creates a service oriented view to enable small players’ engagement in the envisioned transactive energy market environment. Aggregation of consumers and of energy resources are addressed as enablers for the participation in local transactions, and indirectly in wholesale markets. Demand response and the active contribution of consumers are incentivized, namely through innovative adequate tariff and remuneration schemes. An existing hybrid simulation platform combining multi-agent technology with physical emulation will be extended to integrate the project achievements, enabling the realistic test and validation of the project results also assessing their contribution to increased smart grid efficiency and lower pollutant emissions and energy costs.

Main goals:

• Development of the business models to support the implementation of a fully transactive energy system, through the integration of local electricity markets in the current market structure. Advances of smart grids are used as departing point.

• To explore the aggregation concept as the main connector between local communities and wholesale electricity markets. Innovative aggregation methods using Artificial Intelligence and data mining techniques will be developed.

• To develop the means to enable small players to benefit from market opportunities. This is envisioned through the definition of advanced dynamic energy tariffs and remuneration schemes, which will transmit the local and wholesale market value to the small players.

• To experiment and validate the developed business models and methods in a laboratorial prototype, through the integration in a simulation platform existing in ISEP, which combines multi-agent simulation with physical control of energy resources, and addresses the complementary fields of electricity markets and smart grids.