Active consumer characterization and aggregation

This chapter focuses on the participation of the aggregator into day-ahead markets and formulates an optimization problem whose solution allows the aggregator to design an optimal daily business strategy for maximizing its revenue. It provides an overview of a possible functional and software architecture of the aggregator. The chapter first presents a description of the interactions with other market players and electricity system operators. It then addresses consumption modeling and flexibility forecasting. The consumption modeling and flexibility forecasting process has four basic components, namely consumer segmentation, aggregated base load forecasting, flexibility forecasting and calibration of price-sensitivity parameters. The chapter provides algorithms for electricity market price forecasting, and reviews reports on an optimization model for the computation of demand response (DR)-based services available on the market. It also describes the overall software architecture of an "aggregator toolbox". Finally, simulation results are reported.