Question: Setting up powermatcher to simulate a local electricity market in a German grid

[derdem]

Hi,
I am working together with a German Grid operator to estimate the potential of local electricity markets from whom I receive data about consumption, local production and the grid topology.

I hope to be able to represent each household by an agent to maximize the utilization of solar power in the grid and to see how much impact the integration of electric vehicles and heat pumps could have on the grid.

So far I achieved to get powermatcher running with the help of the tutorial and play a little bit around with it. The next steps I would like to achieve it to get the CSVlogger working, define and implement bidding strategies for different devices and to set up the grid topology. Is it possible to add agents in powermatcher and save the configuration? I am hoping to receive feedback on how to accomplish the 3 things. I managed to get the CSVlogger running the first time I started the demo, but I wasn't able to reproduce the file and couldn't figure out the problem.

Cheers,
Niko

[wilcowijbrandi]

Hi Niko,

Great to hear you are looking into PowerMatcher! To answer you questions:

• Yes, it's possible to create your own bidding strategy for agents. You can check out the example package to see some (simple) examples of agents. It might also be worth it to take a look at EF-Pi (fka FPAI). EF-Pi has the EFI interface included, which makes it easier to implement logic for smart devices. You can implement one of the four EFI interfaces, than you can use one of the four generic PowerMatcher device agents. You can find all the code in the fpai-apps repository.
• Just to be clear: PowerMatcher by itself does not do anything with a grid topology. You can model the structure of your PowerMatcher cluster in such a way that it follows your grid topology (with Concentrator agents), in order to do congestion manangement or local balancing.
• What do you mean by saving the configuration? If you just don't want to lose the configuration every time you start the code from Eclipse, you can do the following: Click the small triangle next to the 'Run as...' button (with the green 'play' icon) from the toolbar in the top and click 'Run configurations...'. Select the right .bndrun file on the left, and uncheck the 'Clean storage area before launch.' checkbox.
• Regarding the CSVlogger: How did you start it? Do you see anything suspicious in the logging?

Hope this helps!

By the way, at TNO we are doing more work with simulations, including co-simulations with both PowerMatcher and loadflow to see the effects on the power grid. It sounds like this might be useful for you. If you would be interested in a collaboration, we can set up a call to discuss it in more detail. Please contact me at wilco dot wijbrandi at tno dot nl.

Cheers,
Wilco