Local electricity trading is a concept that allows active electricity trading between consumers, producers and/or prosumers located in a local low voltage distribution grid. The concept should provide added value to the participants and accelerate the democratization, decarbonization and decentralization of the power sector. The effects of local electricity trading on voltage levels in distribution grids are just in the early stage of research, together with the possible means of control, market design, market-clearing approaches and integration of the local electricity trading within the electricity markets. The aim of this work is to contribute to the research by examining if near real-time local electricity trading can be implemented in a distribution grid without time-consuming security-constrained unit commitment calculations for the observed time horizon and without security-constrained economic dispatch calculations for each trading period. Moreover, this work investigates if the implementation of local electricity trading can contribute to the avoidance of unpredictable and unfavorable consumption/production patterns, which can appear in the distribution grid due to the random behavior of a large number of participants. It is analyzed if a contribution to the maintenance of the voltages and currents within limits can be achieved that way. The method for simulation of a local electricity market and analysis of power flows and voltage levels is presented. The auction-based local electricity trading is simulated and applied on the modified IEEE European Low Voltage Test Feeder where the effects of local electricity trading on power flows and voltage levels are studied for boundary elasticities and prices of demand and supply offering curves. It is shown that the local electricity trading has potential to incentivize active participation of prosumers, which can lead to better demand/supply balancing at the local level and to a decrease of voltage fluctuations.

The paper analyses the coordinated hydro-wind power generation considering joint bidding in the electricity market. The impact of mutual bidding strategies on market prices, traded volumes, and revenues has been quantified. The coordination assumes that hydro power generation is scheduled mainly to compensate the differences between actual and planned wind power outputs. The potential of this coordination in achieving and utilizing of market power is explored. The market equilibrium of asymmetric generation companies is analyzed using a game theory approach. The assumed market situation is imperfect competition and non-cooperative game. A numerical approximation of the asymmetric supply function equilibrium is used to model this game. An introduced novelty is the application of an asymmetric supply function equilibrium approximation for coordinated hydro-wind power generation. The model is tested using real input data from the Croatian power system.

The crucial design elements of a good capacity remuneration mechanism are market orientation, insurance of long-term power system adequacy, and optimal cross-border generation capacity utilization. Having in mind these design elements, this research aims to propose a financially fair pricing mechanism that will guarantee enough new capacity and will not present state aid. The proposed capacity remuneration mechanism is an easy-to-implement linear program problem presented in its primal and dual form. The shadow prices in the primal problem and dual variables in the dual problem are used to calculate the prices of firm capacity which is capacity needed for long-term power system adequacy under capacity remuneration mechanism. In order to test if the mechanism ensures sufficient new capacity under fair prices, the mechanism is tested on the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) regional block consisting of Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, and Croatia with simulation conducted for a period of one year with a one-hour resolution and for different scenarios of the credible critical events from a standpoint of security of supply; different amounts of newly installed firm capacity; different short-run marginal costs of newly installed firm capacity; and different capacity factors of newly installed firm capacity. Test data such as electricity prices and electricity load are referred to the year 2018. The results show that the worst-case scenario for Croatia is an isolated system scenario with dry hydrology that results with high values of indicators expected energy not served (EENS), loss of load expectation (LOLE), and loss of load probability (LOLP) for Croatia. Therefore, new capacity of several hundred MW is needed to stabilize these indicators at lower values. Price for that capacity depends on the range of installed firm capacity and should be in range of 1000–7000 €/MW/year for value of lost load (VoLL) in Croatia of 1000 €/MWh and 3000–22,000 €/MW/year for VoLL of 3100 €/MWh that correlates with prices from already established capacity markets. The presented methodology can assist policymakers, regulators, and market operators when determining capacity remuneration mechanism rules and both capacity and price caps. On the other hand, it can help capacity market participants to prepare the most suitable and near-optimal bids on capacity markets.

With the restructuring of the power system, household-level end users are becoming more prominent participants by integrating renewable energy sources and smart devices and becoming flexible prosumers. The use of microgrids is a way of aggregating local end users into a single entity and catering for the consumption needs of shareholders. Various microgrid architectures are the result of the local energy community following different decarbonisation strategies and are frequently not optimised in terms of size, technology or other influential factors for energy systems. This paper discusses the operational and planning aspects of three different microgrid setups, looking at them as individual market participants within a local electricity market. This kind of implementation enables mutual trade between microgrids without additional charges, where they can provide flexibility and balance for one another. The developed models take into account multiple uncertainties arising from photovoltaic production, day-ahead electricity prices and electricity load. A total number of nine case studies and sensitivity analyses are presented, from daily operation to the annual planning perspective. The systematic study of different microgrid setups, operational principles/goals and cooperation mechanisms provides a clear understanding of operational and planning benefits: the electrification strategy of decarbonising microgrids outperforms gas and hydrogen technologies by a significant margin. The value of coupling different types of multi-energy microgrids, with the goal of joint market participation, was not proven to be better on a yearly level compared to the operation of same technology-type microgrids. Additional analyses focus on introducing distribution and transmission fees to an MG cooperation model and allow us to come to the conclusion of there being a minor impact on the overall operation.