Developing a Blockchain Transactive Energy Control Platform in Lebanon to Transform the New Hampshire Electricity Market

Abstract

The electricity distribution system is fundamentally changing due to the widespread adoption of distributed generation, network-enabled physical devices, and active consumer engagement. These changes necessitate new control structures for electric distribution systems that leverage the benefits of integral social and retail market engagement from individual electricity consumers through active community-level coordination to support the integration of distributed energy resources. This work discusses a collaboration between Dartmouth, the City of Lebanon New Hampshire (NH) and Liberty Utilities to develop a transactive energy control platform for Lebanon. At its core, this work highlights the efforts of determined communities within the state of New Hampshire seeking to democratize energy and spearhead the sustainable energy transition. The work implements a distributed economic model-predictive control (MPC) formulation of a dynamic alternating current (AC) optimal power flow to study the flows of power within the Lebanon distribution grid. It employs the recently proposed augmented Lagrangian alternating direction inexact newton (ALADIN) distributed control algorithm that has been shown to guarantee convergence even for non-convex problems. The paper demonstrates the simulation methodology on a 13 node Lebanon feeder with a peak load of 6000kW. Ultimately, this work seeks to highlight the added benefits of a distributed transactive energy implementation namely: lowered emissions, cheaper cost of electricity, and improved reliability of the Lebanon electric distribution system.