Adjustable Price-Sensitive DER Bidding Within Network Envelopes

Abstract

The increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DER) has highlighted the role of aggregators as mediators who enable the participation of DER fleet in energy and reserve markets. Since DER are scattered across the distribution network, the overall bids reaching the market need to account for distribution network physical limits. This is challenging as the grid operator and aggregators are independent parties with separate roles and privacy requirements. The uncertainty around demand, solar power, and electricity price further complicates aggregators' job in calculating reliable network-secure bids. To overcome these challenges, we propose a price-sensitive bidding approach within network operating envelopes that enables aggregators to provide reliable market services. To ensure that data uncertainty neither leads to network violations nor leaves aggregators unable to deliver their market commitments, we introduce a piecewise affinely adjustable optimisation (PAARO) controller into our bidding problem. We also extend the aggregator bidding problem to account for cases where the overall consumer uncertainty cancels out, providing a less conservative solution. We illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach using 69-bus/906-bus distribution networks. The results show that our approach could increase aggregator and hence consumer benefits by up to 14%, compared to a price-insensitive and deterministic approach.