The European policy focus on smart grids implies their development as an indispensable part of the future power system. However, the definition of a smart grid is broad and vague, and the actual implementation of a smart grid can differ significantly depending on the stakeholders involved. Smart electricity grids can be defined as electricity networks that can intelligently integrate the behaviour and actions of all end users connected to them – generators, consumers and those that are both – in order to efficiently ensure a sustainable, economic and secure electricity supply. This integration of behaviour is achieved through a two-way information and power exchange between suppliers and consumers using information technology.@en

Managing electric flexibility is of importance for reliable electricity supply, especially in a situation with increasing penetration of renewable electricity production. One of the capabilities of electricity smart grids is the possibility to incorporate distributed energy resources for provision of electric flexibility to the system. This paper presents an approach to determine the investment and short-term average costs of distributed energy resources to supply flexibility services in a local system, and compares those costs to the average costs in the Dutch markets for balancing and day-ahead flexibility. The approach in this paper is useful for techno-economic analysis of flexibility from distributed energy resources and the economic valuation of flexibility for trading in traditional markets. The analysis shows that local flexibility in many cases is much more expensive than centrally provided flexibility.@en

Managing electric flexibility is of importance for reliable electricity supply, especially in a situation with increasing penetration of renewable electricity production. One of the capabilities of electricity smart grids is the possibility to incorporate distributed energy resources for provision of electric flexibility to the system. This paper presents an approach to determine the investment and short-term average costs of distributed energy resources to supply flexibility services in a local system, and compares those costs to the average costs in the Dutch markets for balancing and day-ahead flexibility. The approach in this paper is useful for techno-economic analysis of flexibility from distributed energy resources and the economic valuation of flexibility for trading in traditional markets. The analysis shows that local flexibility in many cases is much more expensive than centrally provided flexibility.@en

Managing electric flexibility is of importance for reliable electricity supply, especially in a situation with increasing penetration of renewable electricity production. One of the capabilities of electricity smart grids is the possibility to incorporate distributed energy resources for provision of electric flexibility to the system. This paper presents an approach to determine the investment and short-term average costs of distributed energy resources to supply flexibility services in a local system, and compares those costs to the average costs in the Dutch markets for balancing and day-ahead flexibility. The approach in this paper is useful for techno-economic analysis of flexibility from distributed energy resources and the economic valuation of flexibility for trading in traditional markets. The analysis shows that local flexibility in many cases is much more expensive than centrally provided flexibility.@en

The growing penetration of distributed energy resources is opening up opportunities for local energy management (LEM) – the coordination of decentralized energy supply, storage, transport, conversion and consumption within a given geographical area. Because European electricity market liberalization concentrates competition at the wholesale level, local energy management at the distribution level is likely to impose new roles and responsibilities on existing and/or new actors. This paper provides insights into the appropriateness of organizational models for flexibility management to guarantee retail competition and feasibility for upscaling. By means of a new analytical framework three projects in the Netherlands and one in Germany have been analysed. Both the local aggregator and dynamic pricing projects present potentials for retail competition and feasibility of upscaling in Europe.@en

Net-metering is commonly known as a practice by which owners of distributed generation (DG) units may offset their electricity consumption from the grid with local generation. The increasing number of prosumers (consumers that both produce and consume electricity) with solar photovoltaic (PV) generation combined with net-metering results in reduced incomes for many network utilities worldwide. Consequently, this pushes utilities to increase charges per kW h in order to recover costs. For non-PV owners, this could result into inequality issues due to the fact that also non-PV owners have to pay higher chargers for their electricity consumed to make up for netted costs of PV-owners. In order to provide insight in those inequality issues caused by net-metering, this study presents the effects on cross-subsidies, cost recovery and policy objectives evolving from different applied netmetering and tariff designs for a residential consumer. Eventually this paper provides recommendations regarding tariffs and metering that will result in more explicit incentives for PV, instead of the current implicit incentives which are present to PV owners due to net-metering.@en