Agent-based Modeling of Climate and Electricity Market Impact on Commercial Greenhouse Growers’ Demand Response Adoption

Commercial greenhouses in Denmark account for 0.7% of the total Danish electricity consumption in 2017. 75% of the consumption is estimated to come from artificial light. Artificial light in the greenhouses is identified as a major potential to provide energy flexibility through demand response. Energy flexibility in greenhouses is depending on the electricity price and weather conditions as artificial light is managed in relation to natural light and hourly electricity prices. Therefore, this paper investigates commercial greenhouse growers' adoption behavior of implicit demand response enabled software solutions in different geographical regions with different weather conditions and electricity markets. The simulation of the greenhouses is developed as an agent-based system. The paper uses Denmark as the baseline model, the UK for market comparison with Denmark, and Spain and Denmark for analyzing the adoption rate's sensitivity to solar irradiation. The results reveal that higher electricity prices and more solar irradiation result in faster adoption and the adoption rate is more sensitive to electricity price than solar irradiation.