An Electricity Market with Reactive Power Trading: Incorporating Dynamic Operating Envelopes

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel electricity market model that integrates reactive power trading and dynamic operating envelopes to enhance voltage regulation and grid integration of distributed energy resources like rooftop solar and batteries.

Contribution

It introduces a market design incorporating P2P reactive power trading and dynamic operating envelopes, formulated as an optimization problem for improved grid management.

Findings

Market supports P2P energy and reactive power trading.

Voltage profiles are improved through dynamic operating envelopes.

Benchmarking shows effective grid constraint management.

Abstract

Electricity market design that accounts for grid constraints such as voltage and thermal limits at the distribution level can increase opportunities for the grid integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). In this paper, we consider rooftop solar backed by battery storage connected to a distribution grid. We design an electricity market to support customers sharing rooftop generation in excess of their energy demand, where customers earn a profit through peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading. Our proposed electricity market also incorporates P2P reactive power trading to improve the voltage profile across a distribution feeder. We formulate the electricity market as an optimization-based problem, where voltage and thermal limits across a feeder are managed through the assignment of customer-specific dynamic operating envelopes (DOEs). The electricity market equilibrium is referred to as a competitive equilibrium, which is equivalent to a Nash equilibrium in a standard game. Our proposed market design is benchmarked using the IEEE 13-node test feeder.