Exploitation of Distributed Energy Resources for local services on power distribution network

The spread use of cooling systems for residential users and industrial processes, combined with the increasing number of electric vehicles, is causing a substantial increase of the electrical load in medium and low voltage distribution networks. This increasing load is partially compensated by Distributed Generation (DG), mainly renewable and not controllable, which can however cause occasional overgeneration in the distribution network. All these events are causing unwanted situations in the distribution network, such as congestion or large variations of the power factor. One of the possible solutions to these problems is to open a market for local services, where the Distribution System Operators (DSOs) can find the necessary resources to solve the problems. This paper demonstrates the potential of a Local Services Market (LSM) for grid congestion management in a context of a real use-case. A real portion of the distribution system of Milan has been modelled and integrated into a simulator of a LSM. The results show that the proposed approach represents a valuable solution to the compensation of distribution network congestion. With the assumptions made, the average annual cost of the DSO to buy local services is around 94~€/MWh. This cost may vary depending on the error of the load forecasts, currently equal to approximately 10%.