Ref. POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029803, FCT-Portugal
06-2018 to 05-2021 (ongoing)
Funding: € 239,340.31
Principal Investigator (PI).
Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI).
Assistant Researcher.
Research Fellow and Web Coordinator.
Unlocking demand response potential with Next generation innovative optimization Tools Empowering prosumers and Distribution grid benefits.
Unlocking demand response potential with Next generation innovative optimization Tools Empowering prosumers and Distribution grid benefits.
a) to develop disruptive DR (Demand Response) solutions based on distributed data analytics and optimization functions to enable full integration of demand-side flexibility in the electricity market, system operation and planning, while fostering innovative business models, making use of new data management and consumer/prosumer involvement approaches;
b) to develop a variety of innovative DR functionalities that enable DSOs (Distribution System Operators) to plan and operate distribution networks with a high share of RES (Renewable Energy Sources) in a stable, secure and economic way. Additionally, these functionalities will maximize the socio-economic value of demand-side flexibility for retailers, aggregators, buildings and consumers/prosumers.
Back to top.Unlocking demand response potential with Next generation innovative optimization Tools Empowering prosumers and Distribution grid benefits.
UNiTED will focus on the highly novel and innovative aspects that will result in significant progress beyond the current state of the art, as follows:
CHALLENGE A Tools for DR Forecast, Profiling, Segmentation, and Load Forecasting
CHALLENGE B Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) and Microgrids as Active Balancing Assets
CHALLENGE C Comfort Standards, Data Privacy and Security in DR
CHALLENGE D Business Models to Enable Prosumers Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Trading
Back to top.Unlocking demand response potential with Next generation innovative optimization Tools Empowering prosumers and Distribution grid benefits.
The UNiTED project has been constructed around a set of five overarching concepts.
First, consumer engagement at the home level is very challenging, because of a mix of issues including privacy and security aspects, uncomfortable usage of the technology, low perceived cost-effectiveness of the possible incentives, and lack of best practices. The introduction of responsive agents’ sensitive to frequency changes may avoid human intervention in DR management, enabling the actuation of automatic functions to increase demand flexibility.
Second, a commercial building includes different customers with sensitive loads and economically relevant data. The decisions on the different operations are taken by a dedicated manager and not by an external aggregator. This requires an internal management of the DR contributions, as well as the determination of the overall DR contribution and flexibility needed to interact with the external system.
Third, for the set of consumers associated with an aggregator or retailer, the challenge is to design scalable aggregation functions with minimum exchange of information, and using an adequate ICT ecosystem that integrates heterogeneous smart grid technologies, services, and platforms. This requires the implementation of distributed learning and optimization techniques for DR scheduling and control implemented in an IoT data processing framework.
Fourth, in an islanded microgrid, a key challenge is to make the island survive a disturbance by balancing generation and load in emergency conditions. The exploitation of fast-acting DR driven by a frequency responsive controller would help improve generation-load balancing through a proper coordination with other available resources, such as small-scale generation and energy storage.
Fifth, in a distribution grid, the exploitation of the numerous distribution level DR resources for the provision of system services is an important challenge, in particular for insular power systems.
Back to top.Unlocking demand response potential with Next generation innovative optimization Tools Empowering prosumers and Distribution grid benefits.
The conceptual solutions identified and the related procedures will be synthesized into a set of innovative DR Optimization Tools denoted as DROTx (where x is the tool identifier):
DROT1: (under development)
Decentralized DR-based optimal power flow (with prosumers’ private information)
DROT2: (under development)
Optimal schedule of controllable loads for residential DR (social welfare maximization)
DROT3: (under development)
Optimization of the energy management in commercial buildings (without aggregator and operating as a VPP)
DROT4: (under development)
Distributed optimization of prosumers’ flexibility (with minimal information exchange)
DROT5: (under development)
Risk-constrained stochastic optimization tool for aggregated DR (provision of multiple services)
DROT6: (under development)
Multi-temporal microgrid load and generation balancing (without grid connection)
DROT7: (under development)
Provision of balancing services from DR (in distribution networks)
To be updated.
To be updated.
UNiTED Principal Investigator (PI).
João P. S. Catalão (M’04-SM’12) received the M.Sc. degree from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree and Habilitation for Full Professor ("Agregação") from the University of Beira Interior (UBI), Covilha, Portugal, in 2007 and 2013, respectively.
Currently, he is a Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), Porto, Portugal, and Researcher at INESC TEC, INESC-ID/IST-UL, and C-MAST/UBI. He was also appointed as Visiting Professor by North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China. He was the Primary Coordinator of the EU-funded FP7 project SiNGULAR ("Smart and Sustainable Insular Electricity Grids Under Large-Scale Renewable Integration"), a 5.2-million-euro project involving 11 industry partners. He has authored or coauthored more than 675 publications, including 252 journal papers (more than 75 IEEE Transactions/Journal papers), 370 conference proceedings papers, 5 books, 34 book chapters, and 14 technical reports, with an h-index of 43, an i10-index of 173, and over 7380 citations (according to Google Scholar), having supervised more than 70 post-docs, Ph.D. and M.Sc. students. He is the Editor of the books entitled “Electric Power Systems: Advanced Forecasting Techniques and Optimal Generation Scheduling” and “Smart and Sustainable Power Systems: Operations, Planning and Economics of Insular Electricity Grids” (Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press, 2012 and 2015, respectively). His research interests include power system operations and planning, hydro and thermal scheduling, wind and price forecasting, distributed renewable generation, demand response and smart grids.
Prof. Catalão is an Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, an Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, and a Subject Editor of the IET Renewable Power Generation. From 2011 till 2018 (seven years) he was an Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY and an Associate Editor of the IET Renewable Power Generation. He was the Guest Editor-in-Chief for the Special Section on "Real-Time Demand Response" of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, published in December 2012, the Guest Editor-in-Chief for the Special Section on "Reserve and Flexibility for Handling Variability and Uncertainty of Renewable Generation" of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, published in April 2016, and the Corresponding Guest Editor for the Special Section on "Industrial and Commercial Demand Response" of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, to be published in November 2018. Since March 2018, he is the Lead Guest Editor for the Special Issue on "Demand Side Management and Market Design for Renewable Energy Support and Integration" of the IET Renewable Power Generation. He was the recipient of the 2011 Scientific Merit Award UBI-FE/Santander Universities, the 2012 Scientific Award UTL/Santander Totta, the 2016 FEUP Diploma of Scientific Recognition, and the Best INESC-ID Researcher 2017 Award, in addition to an Honorable Mention in the 2017 Scientific Awards ULisboa/Santander Universities. Moreover, he has won 4 Best Paper Awards at IEEE Conferences.
Back to top.UNiTED Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI).
Ricardo Bessa was born in 1983 in Viseu, received his Licenciado (five-year) degree from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal (FEUP) in 2006 in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2008, he received the M.Sc. degree in Data Analysis and Decision Support Systems on the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (FEP). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Energy Systems (MIT Portugal) at FEUP in 2013. Currently, he is a Senior Researcher and Area Manager at INESC TEC in its Center for Power and Energy Systems.
His research interests include renewable energy forecasting, electric vehicles, data mining and decision-making under risk. He worked in several international projects such as the European Projects FP6 ANEMOS.plus, FP7 SuSTAINABLE, FP7 EvolvDSO, Horizon 2020 UPGRID, Horizon 2020 InteGrid and an international collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. At the national level he participated in the development of renewable energy forecasting systems and consultant services about energy storage.
He is co-author of more than 32 journal papers and 61 conference papers.
Back to top.UNiTED Assitant Researcher.
Miadreza Shafie-khah (M’13-SM’17) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran, in 2008 and 2012, respectively. He received his first postdoc from the University of Beira Interior (UBI), Covilha, Portugal in 2015, while working on the 5.2-million-euro FP7 project SiNGULAR (“Smart and Sustainable Insular Electricity Grids Under Large-Scale Renewable Integration”). He received his second postdoc from the University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy in 2016. He was an Assistant Professor equivalent (Visiting Scientist) and Senior Researcher at CMAST/UBI, where he had a major role of coordinating a WP in the 2.1-million-euro national project ESGRIDS (“Enhancing Smart GRIDS for Sustainability”), while co-supervising three PhD students and two post-doctoral fellows. Currently, he is an Assistant/Senior Researcher at INESC TEC. He was considered one of the Outstanding Reviewers of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, in 2014 and 2017, one of the Best Reviewers of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, in 2016 and 2017, and one of the Outstanding Reviewers of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, in 2017.
His research interests include power market simulation, market power monitoring, power system optimization, demand response, electric vehicles, price forecasting and smart grids.
Back to top.UNiTED Research Fellow and Web Coordinator.
I hold a degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the German University in Cairo (New Cairo, Egypt) and a degree in Computational Mechanics from FEUP (Porto, Portugal). I am now part of the MIT Portugal Program in Sustainable Energy Systems. My current research interests include Demand Response, Decentralized Energy Markets, Cyber-Physical Systems, and Numerical Modeling and Simulation.
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