Transactive Energy: an Effective Mechanism for Balancing Electric Energy System

Large-scales of distributed energy resources (DERs) including renewable generations such as wind and photovoltaic generation, electric vehicles will bring operational challenges to power system operation. On the transmission system level, the transmission system operator needs new balancing methods and balancing resources. On the distribution system level, the connected DERs may cause grid congestion problems. To accommodate more DERs in the system, especially at local level, the output of DERs should be coordinated to mitigate the problems. The coordination method needs to take the interests of various actors into account, thus, this paper reviews a promising coordination mechanism: transactive energy. In this paper, we will first introduce basic concepts and characteristics of transactive energy. Then, a review of existing research and demonstration projects in this area will be presented. In the end, we will describe the key technologies for transactive energy mechanism.