• energy markets
• green hydrogen
• peer-to-peer energy trading

For successful large-scale integration of renewable energy sources (RES), in addition to technical aspects, a change in the consumption habits should be considered. Due to the distributed location of RES and their intermittent nature, concepts of local markets and peer-to-peer trading are becoming attractive energy market solution for the residential
consumers. There is a range of advantages of this type of markets organization, as they enable balancing of supply and demand on the local level, which mitigates the burden of the main grid and smooths the variation in the RES based generators production. In addition, they pave the way to privately owned generators and the possibility of the owners to participate in the market (to sell the excess of generation and buy energy when self-production is not sufficient to cover energy needs), which is expected to make residents more involved and, for example, facilitate the implementation of demand response programs. Despite the positive expectations, peer-to-peer energy trading is a new concept and there is no defined way for its formation and operation, yet. However, the current studies are often highlighting the advantages of P2P markets for the grid operation and regularly assume interconnection of peers/prosumers to the main grid to preserve security of supply, for instance by compensating imbalances which cannot be managed locally. The focus of this thesis is the development and analysis of P2P markets in isolated microgrids. This type of market is motivated by “last- mile” electrification programs. Often rural villages have small demand and are located in remote areas, which makes their connection to the grid not economically convenient. In this case, the energy needs are covered by private small-scale generators (such as diesel generators, PV panels, wind turbines, etc.). To mitigate the drawbacks of such isolation, P2P trades among nearby villages or houses may be established.
In addition to the new model of market organization, other chapters of the thesis present studies that address other challenges in the global RES deployment. In particular, a simulator of the cascading failure of the grid, which considers electro-mechanical properties of the devices in the grid and at the same time is fast enough to timely estimate possible failures in the grid, was developed to mitigate the negative effects of RES integration. The final part of the thesis considers the problem of big-scale storage solution. While hydrogen is expected to play a key role in net-zero emission energy systems, also due to its possibility to store energy in the large scale and for long-term, nowadays it is mainly produced using fossil fuels. Therefore, to contribute to a greener energy mix, the origin of hydrogen should be accurately tracked and adjusted. The study, presented further, proposes to use power flow tracing techniques to trace back the energy mix of hydrogen, and in addition, a method to integrate power flow tracing algorithm in the power flow optimization, therefore maximizing the production of green hydrogen.