Transactive Energy Market Framework for Decentralized Coordination of Demand Side Management Within a Cluster of Buildings

Flexibility in electricity demand can be leveraged for demand side management (DSM) to enable aspects such as "demand following generation" and provide ancillary services to support grid integration of renewable and distributed energy resources. The upcoming connected devices in demand centers such as commercial buildings and households may be leveraged for this. However, the coordination among distributed demand centers in a scalable decentralized manner to achieve DSM objectives is still a challenge. In this article, a generalized hierarchical transactive energy based multiagent framework is proposed. This framework includes energy management demand agents (EMDAs) at the building level, which coordinate the operation of different appliances within the buildings. EMDAs also actively participate on day-ahead Walrasian market at the cluster of buildings level. In this market, the effect of wide-adoption of DSM on generation dispatch is also studied. A particular instance of this framework is also implemented in a cyber-test system consisting of standard industrial microcontroller platforms to emulate practical implementations via smart meters. Experimental results of the proposed system are included to demonstrate the possibility of avoiding disptach from expensive generation units by reduction in peak demand and providing demand response inherently.