A research team led by Washington State University has developed a cloud-based system for trading and sharing energy from solar panels and batteries within a neighborhood. The concept showed potential energy cost savings of approximately 12% over a five-day test period.
Research led by Washington State University has developed and tested an electricity trading system for solar energy and battery storage within a shared neighborhood.
The research presents a model for sharing energy from distributed assets such as solar panels and batteries at the local level, similar to trading at the transmission level.
John Theisen, lead author of the paper, noted that the changing landscape of the electricity industry requires practical solutions for coordinated operations at the distribution level. “If you can coordinate and move electricity in an optimal way, you can increase efficiency, provide better utilization and save a lot of money for the people who operate the assets, the utilities and for the consumers,” he added. “If you can use an underutilized asset, you can get a lot more value out of it.”
The research team’s cloud-based system analyzes solar energy prices and forecasts, allowing an asset owner to trade energy locally and respond to energy price changes throughout the day through a bidding method. It also explains that customers with solar panels and batteries will send bid curves to a third-party platform through the system, allowing them to work with the local utility to balance energy needs and share energy within the community.
The system was tested on one portion of a distribution feeder, equivalent to approximately one-eighth of the substation in the region. Over a five-day test period, the simulations revealed potential savings of approximately $1,000 for the selected assets.
The research paper adds that the simulations, created in collaboration with a local utility network, highlighted that the mechanism could reduce energy costs by as much as 12% in communities with solar and battery energy storage systems. The researchers also validated their approach through field tests with a 1.32 MWh battery.
“If these types of assets existed at that level of participation across the distribution system, you could save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in costs,” Theisen added. “Everyone is concerned that the price of electricity is rising, and it will continue to do so. The only way around that is to be more energy efficient and come up with smarter ways to coordinate electricity.”
The research, developed in collaboration with energy company Avista Utilities, is presented in the research paper “Community-based transactive coordination mechanism for enabling grid-edge systems”, published in the magazine IEEE Transactions on Industrial Applications.
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