Information Exchange Platform for Enabling Ancillary Services from Distributed Energy Resources

The operation of the electrical grid is going through a major change. In future, also small-scale distributed energy resources (DERs) need to be utilized in system operation. Increasing penetration of DERs set new challenges for the grids but also open new possibilities in grid and system operation. Smart utilization of DERs would decrease the total costs of the system but barriers for widespread DER ancillary services still exist and include, amongst others, the lack of widely accepted interoperable communication interfaces and the inadequate number of studies going beyond simulations. This paper describes the development of an information exchange platform that enables interoperable data exchange between different energy system actors enabling more efficient use of customers’ and other market actors’ DERs in system operation. The operation of the developed information exchange platform is demonstrated with an example use case that considers utilizing DERs for frequency control through the frequency containment reserve market.