Research on Power Aggregators within the European Internal Electricity Market

The ongoing climate changes have determined governing bodies from all around the globe to set ambitious targets for CO2 reduction. In recent years, renewable energy technologies have proven themselves to be a method of CO2 reduction that is competitive in terms of both costs and efficiency, which led to the technologies becoming affordable and practical for residential use. Since the adoption of the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package in 2019, consumers were encouraged to have an active role in the power sector. This has led to the emergence of a new participant in the energy system, the power aggregator. From the scientific literature that has been covered so far, many articles focus on the economic benefits that different aggregator business models bring to the aggregators, their clients, and the system. Other scientific papers focus on optimizing how aggregators participate in energy markets by taking into consideration the technologies included in their portfolios and pricing mechanisms. Regardless of the subjects tackled, the articles mostly present theoretical aspects since, in practice, residential power aggregators are still not present in many countries. For all the reports that have been turned in so far, secondary research was carried out to gain a better understanding of the current power sector context. Renewable energy technologies were reviewed to uncover synergies that would prove valuable for power aggregator portfolios, existing business models of aggregators were examined to have a grasp on regulatory and economic limitations, and academic papers related to mathematical optimization models were studied. The doctoral research, for which this paper presents the progress, aims to use secondary research to understand aggregators at a European level and then to perform primary research into implementing the aggregating activity in Romania in the context of an accelerated shift to a decentralized power system.