Self-Sustainable Community of Electricity Prosumers in the Emerging Distribution System

In distribution systems, a multitude of prosumers interact among themselves in social networks and with the electricity network through a variety of information and communication technology tools. In this paper, we propose a new vision for the distribution system in which prosumers are encouraged by different balancing premiums to balance their electricity in a local community. Price-responsive generation and demand of an individual prosumer are affected by his/her attitudes and inherent characteristics. Further, the individual attitudes on benefit and comfort would evolve during social interactions. A load aggregator, on behalf of prosumers, participate the community market run by a local electricity coordinator who takes responsibilities for operational securities and uses nodal prices to guide prosumers' physical behaviors. A regulator is assumed to design balancing premiums schemes. Multi-agent based simulation with a four-layered representation is employed to study features of the community and the best incentive strategies for the desired performance.