MIRABEL WP7 Standardization, Dissemination and Exploitation
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4 Flexibility concept
The flexibility concept assumes that parties connected to the grid produce offerings of
flexibility in load and (distributed) generation. Thereby, so-called flex-offers are issued
indicating these power profile flexibilities, e.g. shifting in time or changing the energy
amount. In the flex-offer approach, consumers and producers directly specify their
demand and supply power profile flexibility in a fine-grained manner (household and SME
level). Flex-offers are dynamically scheduled in near real-time, e.g. in case when the
energy production from renewable energy sources, such as wind turbines, deviates from
the forecasted production of the energy system.
4.1 The Flex-offer in the energy system
The central concept of our approach is the flex-offer specification. Essentially, a flex-offer
is a request for demand or supply of energy with specified flexibilities as shown in Figure
1. The bars represent an electricity profile which is split into six time intervals. The
flexibility in time is represented by the minimal and the maximal start time. The white, light
grey and dark grey sections of the bars visualize the flexibility of the amount. The given
flexibilities enable the scheduling of requests on higher hierarchy levels.
Figure 1: General example of a flex-offer specification.
On the prosumer level and within its EMS, a flex-offer is bound to a device consuming or
producing electricity, e.g. a dishwasher, dryer, washing machine, swimming pool pump,
electrical heating, heat pump device, charging of an electric vehicle, and combined
generation of heat and power. The profile of the flex-offer corresponds to the profile of the
device (and its flexibility).
Energy management for consumers and producers is realized at the lowest level of the
hierarchy, and it uses functionality either provided by a smart meter or a separate energy
management system. From the perspective of metering and data management, we
distinguish between demand and supply. The system stores historic data and uses it to
forecast demand and supply for the near future in prosumer profiles (i.e., day ahead and
intra-day). Prosumers can issue flex-offers usually one day ahead or intra-day, i.e. near
real-time.
The Balance Responsible Party (BRP) further aggregates the flex-offers, schedules them
depending on several factors like the current market situation, the availability of
renewable energy and the energy prices, and negotiates the price, the use and timing of
flex-offers with the prosumers. By using schedulable flex-offers, a BRP is able to use
Figure 2: Flexibility in MIRABEL with dimensions time
and energy amount (Verhoosel et al., 2011).
MIRABEL WP7 Standardization, Dissemination and Exploitation
Deliverable D7.5: MIRABEL-ONE: Initial draft of the MIRABEL Standard
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Copyright MIRABEL Consortium 2010-2012
Issuer of flexibility Acquirer of flexibility
Party connected to the grid: consumer BRP
BRP Party connected to the grid: producer
BRP Balance supplier
BRP Market operator
BRP System operator
Table 2: Issuers and acquirer of flexibility; mapping on ENTSO-E role model.
Therefore, in the remainder of this document we will use the general terms issuer and
acquirer of flexibility. Figure 10 provides a schematic view on the functionalities of
acquirers and issuers of flexibility in load and/or generation. In general, any number of
issuers of flexibility can interact with any number of acquirers of flexibility. However, both
the technical as well as the commercial setting may limit the number of issuers and/or
acquirers. In this context, an arbitrary number of parties connected to the grid (many
issuers) offer flexibilities to their balance responsible party (the single acquirer).
Figure 10: Schematic view of the issuer and acquirer actors.
Issuers of flexibility control one or more devices that demand energy or resources that
supply energy. This control is executed either directly or indirectly and allows control of
the power profiles of these devices and resources. The issuers decide what flexibility is
offered; based on e.g. technical, financial and/or comfort grounds. Thus, the flexibility-
issuer remains autonomous in its decision making.
Acquirers of flexibility have a use for the ability to control the power profiles of these
devices and resources as offered by the flexibility-issuers. This includes e.g. the ability for
a balance responsible party to achieve the schedules submitted to a system operator as
in the ENTSO-E scheduling system with a substantial amount of intermittent energy
sources in their portfolio.
Offerings of flexibility need to be accepted (or rejected) by the acquiring party. When
flexibility offered is accepted, a profile assignment must be provided by the acquiring
party to indicate the desired behaviour. This profile assignment must comply with the
limits of the flexibility offered; e.g. no higher power output then offered, no temporal shift
beyond the temporal bounds offered, etc.
Figure 3: Roles in MIRABEL (Verhoosel et al., 2011).
the defined time frame in flexOffer). The actual de-
cision of energy usage profile (time, energy, costs)
is communicated with a flexOfferAssignment message
afterwards. In Figure 3, prosumer is depicted as the
issuer of flexibility and BRP as the acquirer of flexi-
bility. The specification mentions many more roles of
energy domain that can interact via MIRABEL, but
the focus is on prosumer and BRP.
In summary, MIRABEL only defines one service
with flexOffer being the request and flexOfferAccep-
tance or flexOfferAssignment the responses. On a
technical level, MIRABEL specifies data models (de-
fined in XML schemata) for messages but not the un-
derlying transportation protocol.
3.3 Protocol Comparison
At this point, we don’t want to discuss protocol char-
acteristics in close detail, but rather describe similar-
ities and differences which are most relevant for up-
coming mapping efforts. An in-depth analysis leads
to following conclusions:
1. Since MIRABEL does not specify a transport pro-
tocol, we can accept simple HTTP communica-
tion as a common ground.
2. Both standards define their data models in XML
schemata and use XML messages.
3. Both use similar roles, which allow a general
mapping without extensive modifications in this
area (Table 1).
4. OpenADR defines four services whereas MIRA-
BEL only one. The OpenADR services EiRegis-
terParty and EiReport have no logical equivalents
in MIRABEL. See Section 4.2 for workarounds.
5. OpenADR defines its data types in much more de-
tail than MIRABEL.
6. Whereas in MIRABEL, prosumers send their flex-
ibilities and BRP can accept that or assign a new
energy usage/schedule, in OpenADR VTNs dis-
tribute possible events to VENs and VENs can
decide on accept/opt-in/opt-out. So, there is a
conceptual difference that the deciding role is re-
versed.
Table 1: Comparison of MIRABEL and OpenADR roles.
MIRABEL role Corresponding OpenADR role
Consumer VEN
Producer VEN
BRP VTN
This situation shapes the relation between both pro-
tocols: OpenADR has a comprehensive feature set
and MIRABEL is a simpler protocol in comparison.
Many operations and messages of OpenADR do not
exist in MIRABEL or the differences are so big that a
workaround cannot be applied. Therefore, it is only
possible to map from MIRABEL to OpenADR but
not the other way around. In other words, our aim
is to make MIRABEL OpenADR-compatible.
4 MAPPING
After having established the direction of mapping
(MIRABEL to OpenADR), we can now look at the
fine-grained comparison of message types. The in-
tention is to bridge the gap between MIRABEL’s one
service and OpenADR’s EiEvent and EiOpt services
since they convey DR information. Figure 4 illus-
trates the general idea of message flow and the func-
tion of our tool as a MIRABEL BRP and OpenADR
VEN to mediate between MIRABEL prosumers and
OpenADR VTNs.
Communication with the Prosumer
The mapping tool accepts flexOffer messages, pro-
cesses and maps them to OpenADR messages, com-
municates with a VTN and based on the outcome
of the communication sends flexOfferAcceptance and
flexOfferAssignment to the prosumer. This is basically
the working principle of the solution.
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