Aggregating energy flexibilities under constraints

Abstract

The flexibility of individual energy prosumers (producers and/or consumers) has drawn a lot of attention in recent years. Aggregation of such flexibilities provides prosumers with the opportunity to directly participate in the energy market and at the same time reduces the complexity of scheduling the energy units. However, aggregated flexibility should support normal grid operation. In this paper, we build on the flex-offer (FO) concept to model the inherent flexibility of a prosumer (e.g., a single flexible consumption device such as a clothes washer). An FO captures flexibility in both time and amount dimensions. We define the problem of aggregating FOs taking into account grid power constraints. We also propose two constraint-based aggregation techniques that efficiently aggregate FOs while retaining flexibility. We show through a comprehensive evaluation that our techniques, in contrast to state-of-the-art techniques, respect the constraints imposed by the electrical grid. Moreover, our techniques also reduce the scheduling input size significantly and improve the quality of scheduling results.