Transactive energy in power systems: concepts, techniques and applications

Abstract Transactive energy is a novel concept and emerging techniques for the resource coordination of electric power systems. By negotiating contracts between various devices, units and resources, transactive control techniques are believed to enable the optimal integration of distributed resources while maintaining the power system reliability. Due to its competitive advantages as a regulatory model for power grids, transactive energy and transactive control techniques have received enormous attention from both academia and industry. In the article, the concepts and basic idea of transactive energy and transactive control are introduced. Meanwhile, the state-of-the-art of the transactive energy research and implementation is presented. Further, the price-based mechanism of transactive energy techniques for optimal coordination and control is demonstrated in detail with an optimization model based transactive control solution for a flexible demand management problem. The detailed design of the transactive energy model for the optimal coordination of flexible demand in the demand management system is described. How the two-stage scheduling and operation problem of the flexible demand can be managed based on the transactive energy scheme by the aggregator is explained explicitly. More importantly, the optimization model based clearing mechanism of the transactive energy market is also presented to give a detailed example and explain how the price signals in transactive control methods can be properly determined. The content of the article aims to give a clearer picture of the transactive energy technologies in the advanced operations of electric power systems.