Search

Electricity, as a sustainable energy carrier, plays a central role in the transition scenarios for carbon neutralization of energy systems. Expanding the potential of electricity requires intelligent integration of electricity infrastructures and electricity markets with distributed energy resources (DERs) including roof‐top solar photovoltaics (PVs), controllable loads, and storage batteries. This integration will advance the management of power distribution grids, resulting in harmonization of the distribution grids and variable renewable generation. In the foreseeable future, the DERs will be actively used to perform advanced management of power distribution grids and compensate fluctuation in variable renewable power generation such as PVs and wind power. Market‐based coordination mechanisms are already practiced in large‐scale electricity production, electricity trading and transmission around the world. Using these mechanisms at the distribution grid level to integrate numerous flexible devices into the grids remains an important research topic. This paper reviews the role of DER integration toward carbon‐neutral power systems, the state‐of‐art and challenges associated with market‐based approaches for integrating flexible demand, distributed generation, and storage. Methods for assessing the value of DER aggregation such as virtual power plants and microgrids are also explored. © 2024 Institute of Electrical Engineer of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, the Goal of Carbon Neutral in 2050 was declared by Prime Minister in October, 2020. In order to achieve the goal, the Japanese government positioned Renewable Energy Source (RES) such as PV and wind power as 'main power supply resource' and is expanding its introduction by taking various types of countermeasures to solve the problems induced by massive integration of the RES into the grid. In recent years, the power system was damaged many times by a lot of natural disaster such as strong earthquakes, typhoons and heavy rains. The situation of the Japanese power system is drastically changing due to low demand growth, massive introduction of the RES as well as evolution of the power system reform that is introduction of power markets such as energy spot market, capacity market and balancing market. In this paper, our activities toward deregulated, smart and resilient power systems are presented. © 2022 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]