Agent-based modeling and simulation of renewable energy market integration : the case of PV-battery systems

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how high shares of renewable energy sources (RES) can be integrated into the German electricity market. In particular, it examines how a large number of distributed residential RES plants affects the system as a whole and how these impacts can be sensibly modeled. Small-scale systems such as photovoltaic (PV) systems, possibly coupled with batteries, are a way of letting households participate in the energy system and tapping into the area potential of rooftops. However, it is currently unclear whether the incentives in the electricity market are designed so that investment and op- erating decisions of residential RES will benefit the overall system. Most energy system models can only depict the energy system from one perspective, for example from that of a central planner. In the case of small residential plants, investment and operating decisions are currently unaffected by the wholesale market at large. It is therefore difficult to model the behavior of household PV systems in conventional energy models alongside that of large producers. The thesis provides two contributions to the current literature. Firstly, we argue why the method of agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is able to investigate problems as described above. We show that this due to one of the method’s core traits – to take several perspectives and to couple several model approaches into one overall model. This is demonstrated using the example of AMIRIS, an agent-based model of the German elec- tricity market. We also show how technical aspects such as a fast execution speed lead to the model being able to investigate the possibility space of the future German electricity market in higher resolution than usually found in the literature. Secondly, the work investigates in a model application the investment and operational behavior of residential PV systems in the frame of agent-based modeling. The investment and operational decisions are examined in detail from the perspective of the household before we integrate them into the ABMS and draw conclusions for the overall German electricity market. In particular, we show that certain artifacts of the residential PV investment curve can be explained by loss aversion, and that operating patterns of PV battery systems do not correspond to the overall system optimum. To overcome the latter problem, we design means to incentivize operating behavior that is more in alignment with market signals. We argue that household electricity tariffs should be reformed if they are to incentivize more efficient operating decisions. We show that the expansion of PV battery systems is at the early adoption stage and will likely increase with lower PV and battery prices. Finally, we argue that incentive asymmetries should be removed before a large number of systems requiring the current electricity rate scheme to refinance have been built.