Energy Management Strategy for a Society of Prosumers Under the IOT Environment Considering the Network Constraints

The increasing penetration of photovoltaics, energy storage systems, and electric vehicles makes a new entity, named prosumer, becoming possible into power systems. Prosumers are agents that both consume and produce energy. Smart home, home automation technology, and the Internet-of-Thing (IOT) technology with a variety of integrated energy management components are becoming widespread. These technologies enable prosumers to optimize their electricity use considering their energy use and electricity market price information. However, since prosumers are connected at a distribution system level, without proper coordination of prosumers’ energy schedule, bidirectional power flow problem caused by the high proportion of prosumers may arise. The problems include line congestions and voltage violations. To prevent the network problem, prosumers energy schedule needed to be managed by the distribution system operator (DSO). The resulting scheduling model contains large variable dimensions and has the risk of exposure of users’ electricity privacy information. To resolve these problems, a unified quantitative model, named virtual storage (VS) model, is established for various distributed energy resources (DERs) within the prosumer. The prosumers’ VS model is further integrated by aggregators (Aggs) agent. Then, the DSO combines the Aggs’ VS model and two-way power flow constraints to determine the optimal day-ahead schedule of prosumers, using a centralized operation strategy. Finally, a modified IEEE33 bus testing system is used for case verification.