Local energy markets - an IT-architecture design

In recent years, local energy markets have become an important concept in more decentralized energy systems. Implementations in pilot projects provide first insights into different hypotheses and approaches. From a technical perspective, the requirements for the IT infrastructure of a local energy market are diverse, and a holistic view of its architecture is therefore necessary. This article presents an IT-architecture, which enables all basic local energy market functionalities, processes and modules based on the available literature. The proposed IT-architecture can serve as a blueprint for future local market projects as it covers the basic processes and is at the same time extendable. Furthermore, we give a detailed description of a real-world implementation of a local energy market using the described IT-architecture and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the utilized technologies along with this case study.

Quantifying the trade-off between public acceptance and cost efficiency in decentralized energy systems

<p>Renewable energy technologies are most economical when planned at a large scale in a coordinated manner. But local resistance often hinders developments, especially for onshore wind. In these decentralized energy systems, the beauty of landscapes is particularly relevant for acceptance of wind turbines or transmission lines. Thus, by using the scenicness as a proxy for public acceptance, we quantify its impact on optimal energy systems of around 11,000 municipalities. In municipalities with high scenicness, it is likely that onshore wind will be rejected, leading to higher levelized costs of energy up to about 5 €-cent/kWh. Onshore wind would be replaced mainly by solar photovoltaics and the cost-optimal energy systems would be associated with higher CO<sub>2</sub> emissions of up to about 120%. The quantitative basis that we have created can be used to first identify municipalities where public resistance to onshore wind could be particularly high. Second, the results regarding the increase in costs and CO<sub>2</sub> emissions can be used to convince the citizens in these municipalities towards accepting onshore wind installations.</p>

Modeling techniques for decentralized energy systems applied in smart grids

Historically, power grids have emerged as the most economical way to match diversified generation resources. After the Second World War, all advanced countries chose to develop a centralized electrical system to transport energy throughout the national territory and then distribute it to the various points of consumption. In this centralized management, production is adapted to an ever-increasing demand, driven by economic and demographic developments. Gradually, the consumption profile has changed: the development of electrical uses (particularly heating and air conditioning), leading to consumption peaks that are increasingly difficult to satisfy. The appearance of the electric vehicle reinforces these growing imbalances between supply and demand. Thus, the production profile has gradually changed: production has moved closer to the places of consumption but has become more variable, such as wind and solar energy (known as intermittent sources of energy production). In this transforming energy view, these historical centralized and unidirectional networks reach saturation and need to be modernized by turning to a decentralized model. In this perspective, the development of smart grids (SG) is taking place. This paper aims to define decentralized energy systems that provide various benefits and cause significant challenges. Finally, we propose several techniques that are highly efficient in modeling and controlling smart grid systems in order to help decision-makers to address complex problems.

Influence of Renewable Energy on Energy Security of Decentralized Electricity Systems

The article offers evaluation of the potential of renewable energy in improving the energy security of decentralized power supply systems and solving the problems of their development. The authors proposed a complex of indicative indicators with introduction of renewable energy sources as part of separate indicators, which allows us to research the energy security problems of regional decentralized energy systems of power supply. In the rationale for each indicator the place of renewable energy sources in aspects of resource security, the level of reliability of autonomous power supply systems, environmental and other positions of energy security have been shown. The proposed module of indicators with introduction of renewable energy includes a science-based list of criteria, methods and tools for their evaluation with the focus of measures to ensure energy security by means of integrating into autonomous power supply systems of renewable energy plants. The article traces the matching of the proposed approaches with the place of renewable energy in strategic planning documents in the national security of the Russian Federation