An economic analysis of Commercial Aggregator services

Nowadays, trends point to a more decentralized electricity sector with a higher and more flexible penetration rate of renewable generation. A key to reach these aims is a service of flexibility products that exploits the flexibility potential of smaller customers connected to distribution networks. This fact implies the requirement of the services of a new agent called Commercial Aggregator (CA). In order to analyse economic effects that the CA services would have over its clients, a methodology with different layers is proposed. This methodology contains five key modules: (1) Scenario Generator and Consumption Forecasting; (2) Consumer Segmentation; (3) Flexibility Forecast Tool; (4) Market Forecasting and (5) Commercial Optimal Planning Tool. The proposed methodology has been analysed for two different scenarios: the first one based on current data (2015) and the second one considering a possible future scenario (2020). Both scenarios have the same general inputs and they are based on European low voltage (LV) network for domestic users. Numerical results indicate that higher penetration of RES and flexible loads lead to higher profits for the CA.