Demand response is a key element of future power systems due to its capacity to defer grid investments, improve demand participation in the market, and absorb renewable energy source variations. In this regard, demand response can play an important role in delivering ancillary services to power systems. The lack of standardization and ancillary services programs prepared for traditional generators have blocked the participation of demand in these services. Nowadays, increasing needs to ensure the security of supply, renewable fluctuations, and information and communication technology advances are boosting the interest in demand response products to deliver ancillary services. While countries have had lengthy experience with these programs, others are starting from almost zero to develop these programs. To our knowledge, no analysis or standardized comparison exists of the different parameters and prices of demand response in ancillary services among different countries. Our study reviews more than 20 power systems around the world and their programs to classify them according to standard demand response parameters. At the end of the paper we discuss the main characteristics and prices that face demand response in ancillary services markets and a series of policy recommendations to policymakers to improve the deployment on demand participation in ancillary services.

The European Union advocates for legislative support to local energy communities. Measures include the promotion of dynamic energy allocation and discriminatory electricity tariffs such as the recent Spanish framework. However, the impact of these normative changes is not yet evaluated. This paper inquires into the impact of dynamic allocation coefficient and different electricity tariffs on the profitability of local energy communities. To do so, a linear optimisation model is developed and applied to real consumer data in Spain around a variable capacity photovoltaic generation plant. Comparing the economic performance of the static or variable power allocation under the effect of changing electricity tariffs. While both measures are beneficial, the new electricity tariffs result in larger profitability increases than the planned variable coefficients. The combination of measures allows for profitability improvements of up to 25% being complementary measures. However, installations that maximise the potential for electricity generation are still not as profitable due to the low purchase price of surplus energy. While discriminatory electricity price tariffs and variable allocation coefficients are positive measures, further measures are needed for these communities to install generation plants as large as the potential that each case allows.

A transition to a sustainable energy system is essential. In this context, smart grids represent the future of power systems for efficiently integrating renewable energy sources and active consumer participation. Recently, different studies were performed that defined the conceptual architecture of power systems and their agents. However, these conceptual architectures do not overcome all issues for the development of new electricity markets. Thus, a novel conceptual architecture is proposed. The transactions of energy, operation services, and economic flows among the agents proposed are carefully analysed. In this regard, the results allow setting their activities’ boundaries and state their relationships with electricity markets. The suitability of implementing local electricity markets is studied to enforce competition among distributed energy resources by unlocking all the potential that active consumers have. The proposed architecture is designed to offer flexibility and efficiency to the system thanks to a clearly defined way for the exploitation of flexible resources and distributed generation. This upgraded architecture hereby proposed establishes the characteristics of each agent in the forthcoming markets and studies to overcome the barriers to the large deployment of renewable energy sources.