Energies (Mar 2018)
Energy Flexometer: Transactive Energy-Based Internet of Things Technology
Abstract
Effective Energy Management with an active Demand Response (DR) is crucial for future smart energy system. Increasing number of Distributed Energy Resources (DER), local microgrids and prosumers have an essential and real influence on present power distribution system and generate new challenges in power, energy and demand management. A relatively new paradigm in this field is transactive energy (TE), with its value and market-based economic and technical mechanisms to control energy flows. Due to a distributed structure of present and future power system, the Internet of Things (IoT) environment is needed to fully explore flexibility potential from the end-users and prosumers, to offer a bid to involved actors of the smart energy system. In this paper, new approach to connect the market-driven (bottom-up) DR program with current demand-driven (top-down) energy management system (EMS) is presented. Authors consider multi-agent system (MAS) to realize the approach and introduce a concept and standardize the design of new Energy Flexometer. It is proposed as a fundamental agent in the method. Three different functional blocks have been designed and presented as an IoT platform logical interface according to the LonWorks technology. An evaluation study has been performed as well. Results presented in the paper prove the proposed concept and design.
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