Local aggregator enhanced possibilities coupling energy savings and demand response activations

Abstract

Energy communities and local flexibility aggregators offer new pathways for decentralization and decarbonisation of energy systems. Local flexibility aggregators blending heterogenous distributed energy sources (DER) are strengthening the role of households’ consumers in becoming active participants of the energy transition. The recent technological advances resulting in decline in price and increased performance of end-user premises communication devices enable the aggregation based on the granular contribution of DERs. These new aggregating actors have an unenviable role in terms of data collection, optimization and setting up a fair compensation program between peers. Aggregators have a quite important and responsible role in the energy transition, being key players in activating the granular contribution, however their technical and regulatory toolbox is lacking. This is particularly true if the current state-of-the-art of the data collection system is considered. This paper evaluates the opportunities for delivering a synergetic business model bringing together flexibility activations and energy savings delivered by households’ consumers, paying specific attention to robust approach in terms of low availability of the data. Besides revenue diversification opportunities for a local aggregator, such business model could offer a good opportunity to overcome both technical and motivational challenges for the activation of consumers in the energy market. One of the main challenges identified in a paper are the data collection requirements and the development of proper monitoring and verification techniques which could ease the identification of both energy savings and short-term flexibility activations.  This paper proposes possible solutions for establishing a business model enabling the delivery of both energy savings and demand response activations for a local aggregator accessing the energy market, having in mind the technical, regulatory and privacy challenges regarding efficient and performant data collection.