Distributed energy resources flexibility as volumetric options on electricity

Abstract

The goal of the paper is twofold: a) following the identification of the merits of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) by FERC 2222 for the flexibility they bring to the grid, we recognize water heaters and thermostats as mini-batteries and introduce volumetric/swing options that the Aggregator can sell by shifting consumers' consumption while rewarding them; b) We propose to address the pricing complexity of these volumetric options - which are in our setting very general in terms of number of exercises and quantities constraints - by a novel approach that combines Monte Carlo simulations and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN).