Role and Impact of Prosumers in a Sector-Integrated Energy System With High Renewable Shares

Interactions between different policy instruments in real markets can lead to a mismatch between stakeholders striving for individual benefits and the attainment of an overall system optimum. These distortion effects are of particular relevance for sector-integrated systems with high prosumer shares. Distributed battery storage systems, in particular, could constitute a pivotal source of flexibility in close to 100% renewable energy systems. However, depending on their operation mode, these battery systems can either serve individual profit maximization or the benefit of the system as a whole. We quantify the resulting differences by means of a linear optimization model of the electricity market, which we stringently link to a stakeholder’s complete cost-of-energy analysis including relevant regulatory price components. We demonstrate that the effects encompass both system cost changes and distributional effects for certain stakeholder groups. We quantify the effects and apply an impact variation analysis to demonstrate that they could be relevant in view of the overall acceptance of the energy system transformation.