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The Future of Decentralized Electricity Distribution Networks

  • 1st Edition - May 23, 2023
  • Latest edition
  • Editor: Fereidoon Sioshansi
  • Language: English

The Future of Decentralized Electricity Distribution Networks assesses the evolution of the services delivered by the distribution network as demands placed on it prolifera… Read more

Description

The Future of Decentralized Electricity Distribution Networks assesses the evolution of the services delivered by the distribution network as demands placed on it proliferates from distributed, self-generating, power storing and power sharing ‘consumers’ – which Sioshansi terms ‘prosumagers’. The work outlines the processes by which passive and homogeneous electricity consumers become prosumers and prosumagers, the nature of their service needs, and dependence on the services delivered by the distribution network diverges. Contributors assess how consumers are discovering and exercising options to migrate away from total reliance on upstream generators to produce electricity and on the delivery network for its transmission.

As they do so, the "utilities" – be they distributors or retailers – must rethink the traditional utility business model. How will they find sufficient revenues to cover their fixed and variable costs as volumetric consumption declines when some consumers become prosumers – or go a step further and become prosumagers? This work argues that new service, business models and new methods for collecting sufficient revenues to maintain the network are mandatory for the survival of modern utilities.

Key features

  • Examines the future of services demanded by electricity customers as some diverge from their traditional total reliance on the network for delivery of all their service needs
  • Reviews the emergence of new business models to meet the diverging needs of customers
  • Explores the costs imposed by new types of customers on the delivery network and how to collect sufficient revenues from all to maintain it in ways that are efficient, equitable and fair

Readership

Practitioners in the utility industry investigating how to model and plan for demand-side generation, storage and prosumer behaviors. Regulators and policy makers making governance decisions on distributed energy systems. Researchers studying energy markets and energy systems. Energy economists.

Table of contents

Foreword
Jean-Michel Glachant
Preface
Richard Green
Introduction & chapter summaries
Fereidoon Sioshansi

Part One: How technological innovations are changing customers’ service needs

1) What drives consumers to become prosumers and prosumagers?
Fereidoon Sioshansi

2) Commercial rooftop solar in Australia: State of play, innovations and future prospects
Bruce Mountain

3) Reaching world-record levels of rooftop solar PV: Causes and effects in Queensland
Paul Simshauser, Joel Gilmore, and Tim Nelson

4) Are networks keeping up with what customers need?
Fereidoon Sioshansi

Part Two: Old rules, new realities, unsustainable outcome

5) Productive net metering reform: Where do the foundations of regulation, technological change and good economics meet?
Fereidoon Sioshansi and Richard McCann based on unpublished manuscript by Jim Lazar

6) Leveraging the rise of the prosumer to promote electrification
Richard McCann

7) California at crossroads: How not to fumble the opportunities to transform the regulation of the power sector
Kevin Bell

8) The design and structure of retail electricity markets in Europe
Carlo Stagnaro

Part Three: Regulation, policy, pricing

9)Telecom pricing: Lessons for emerging electricity networks
Carl Danner

10) A new value proposition for electric distribution networks
Lorenzo Kristov

11) Why fair and efficient network pricing really matters
David Robinson and Angel Arcos-Vargas

12) Facilitating power system transformation at the distribution network level
Darryl Biggar and Mohammad Hesamzadeh

13) In search of a tariff fit for the grid’s edge revolution: Reflections from Brazil
Richard Hochstetler and João Cho

14)Performance-based regulation to drive utility transformation and encourage DER markets
Karl R. Rábago and Jesse Hitchcock

15) Re-thinking, re-packaging and re-pricing the grid and retail electricity
Mark Kolesar

Part Four: Case studies, emerging innovative services, new business models

16) How an innovative co-op is planning to thrive amidst the market disruptions: The Case of Holy Cross Energy
Bryan Hannegan

17) Turning passive customers into active participants: MCE's innovative DER program
Jennifer Baak

18) How multiple trading relationships could upend historical single supplier business model
John Campbell

19) Innovative products and services to meet the needs of present and future customers
Con Hristodoulidis

20) The future of grid-interactive efficient buildings and local transactive energy markets
Kay Aikin

Epilogue
Stephen Littlechild

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: May 23, 2023
  • Language: English

About the editor

FS

Fereidoon Sioshansi

Dr. Fereidoon Sioshansi is President of Menlo Energy Economics, a consulting firm based in San Francisco with over 35 years of experience in the electric power sector working in analysis of energy markets, specializing in the policy, regulatory, technical and environmental aspects of the electric power sector in the US and internationally. His research and professional interests are concentrated in demand and price forecasting, electricity market design, competitive pricing & bidding, integrated resource planning, energy conservation and energy efficiency, economics of global climate change, sustainability, energy security, renewable energy technologies, and comparative performance of competitive electricity markets. Dr. Sioshansi advises major utility clients and government policy makers domestically and internationally on electricity market reform, restructuring and privatization of the electric power sector. He has published numerous reports, books, book chapters and papers in peer-reviewed journals on a wide range of subjects. His professional background includes working at Southern California Edison Co. (SCE), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), NERA, and Global Energy Decisions. He is the editor and publisher of EEnergy Informer, a monthly newsletter with international circulation. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of The Electricity Journal where he is regularly featured in the “Electricity Currents” section. Dr. Sioshansi also serves on the editorial board of Utilities Policy and is a frequent contributor to Energy Policy. Since 2006, He has edited 12 books on related topics with Elsevier.
Affiliations and expertise
President, Menlo Energy Economics, San Francisco, CA, USA

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