Early Insights into System Impacts of Smart Local Energy Systems
Marko Aunedi, Tim Green

TL;DR
This study uses a system model to evaluate how Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) can reduce costs and emissions in future electricity networks by enhancing flexibility and integrating renewables, with significant savings demonstrated at various penetration levels.
Contribution
It provides new insights into the economic and environmental benefits of SLES, quantifying cost savings and emission reductions under different scenarios and penetration levels.
Findings
SLES can significantly reduce total electricity system costs.
Higher SLES penetration leads to greater cost savings and emission reductions.
Flexibility from SLES remains valuable even with alternative demand-side response methods.
Abstract
A whole-system, investment-optimising model has been used to examine the change in total cost of meeting demand for electricity when Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) are deployed. Our assumption is that SLES, alongside their other features, enhance the flexibility of electricity consumption through demand-side response (DSR) and facilitate use of local energy storage. We find that with the flexibility of SLES present, variable renewables such as offshore wind can displace firm but more expensive low-carbon sources such as CCS. Considering a 100 gCO2/kWh emissions target in 2030, a 10% penetration of SLES could reduce total costs by {\pounds}1.2bn/year relative to no SLES, while at higher penetration of 50% SLES, savings increase twofold to {\pounds}2.8bn/year. Under a more stringent emissions limit of 25 gCO2/kWh in 2040, the savings rise to {\pounds}2.9bn/year for 10% SLES uptake and…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsIntegrated Energy Systems Optimization · Smart Grid Energy Management · Building Energy and Comfort Optimization
