Load areas in radial unbalanced distribution systems

The demand becoming flexible is a requirement for the full exploitation of renewable energy sources. Aggregation may foster the provision of flexibility by small-scale providers connected to distribution grids, since it allows offering significant flexibility volumes to the market. The aggregation of flexibility providers is carried out by the aggregator, a new market role and possibly a new market player. Location information of individual flexibility providers is necessary for both the aggregator and the system operators, in particular, the Distribution System Operator (DSO). For the former, information should allow treating a high number of individual flexibility providers as a single provider to offer significant flexibility volumes to the markets; for the latter, the information should ensure an adequate visibility of the connection of the individual providers to the grid. In the paper, the concept of Load Area (LA) is recalled, which combines the needs of location information of the aggregator and of the DSO. A method for the identification and modeling of LAs for the general case of unbalanced radial systems is proposed. The results of the methods' application to two studied unbalanced networks are presented, showing the effectiveness and viability of the proposed approach.