In the Smart Grid environment, increasingly homes and businesses are investing in solar PV, high-energy battery storage systems and EV's. There is a need to develop mechanisms, tools and framework to purchase electricity not only from the energy retailers but also to trade peer-to-peer amongst consumers. Transactive energy is the emerging area of Power systems economics that has started appearing in research literature and being trialled in the US (Brooklyn Microgrid), New Zealand, Australia and other countries which have functional electricity market operations.
Block chain architecture, using Ethereum hard-fork implementation of Smart Contract, was a pathway that was conceptualized, developed and trialled using transactive energy framework, through a 2017 Part IV power system project. The proof-of-concept was demonstrated, using the two UoA 3-kW grid connected solar system, battery storage, smart meter, PLC, micro-grid simulator, New Zealand wholesale real-time electricity market display etc. available at the Power systems Lab and interacting with UoA property services for grid services.
The aim of 2018 project is to come up with a peer-to-peer trading platform based on the 2017 project learnings but extending it to technical and pricing developments in power system economics for a case-study of co-located or neighbourhood residential community that have invested in smart grid technologies like solar PV, battery storage and electric vehicles. The concept of time-value (as per the following publication) is one option that can be explored along with others that the project student group comes up with.
Zhang, Z. J., & Nair, N.-K. (2017). Distributor “time value” pricing framework to schedule distributed energy resources. International Transactions on Electrical Energy Systems, e2374-e2374. 10.1002/etep.2374
Data from communities in New Zealand that have invested in solar/battery and EV trials are available to the Power system research group through ongoing and past research projects can be used by the this project.
Undergraduate
A retail transactive framework, aligned with current New Zealand electricity market operation, needs to be developed using the approach detailed in the description.
- A proof-of-concept of the developed trading model will have to be demonstrated using the two UoA 3-kW grid connected solar system, battery emulator, OPAL-RT micro-grid simulation model, Smart meter and controllable loads available in the Power systems laboratory.
- Explore integration of the developed concept using commercially available home-automation products (e.g. Apple Homekit, Nest etc.) through proprietary and standard-based protocols.
- If time permits live demonstration at a participating retailer, metering aggregator or distribution network company will be attempted
Preferable to have atleast one student of the group who is enrolled into Power system specialization of courses ( ELECTENG 309, ELECTENG 731 and ELECTENG 703)
Lab allocations have not been finalised