We recently uploaded an arXiv preprint on "Dynamic Net Metering for Energy Communities." This paper, which can be accessed from https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.13677, delves into the innovative concept of dynamic net metering and its potential in revolutionizing energy communities. By proposing a novel framework that considers real-time changes in community behind-the-meter and central DER and flexible consumption, this research aims to efficiently balance communities’s resources, maximize social welfare, and achieve individual and group rationalities via an incentive mechanism design.
Attended The 41st International Energy Workshop (IEW)
I was happy to attend and actively engage in the 41st International Energy Workshop in Colorado School of Mines (CSM), Golden, CO, which featured many great talks that discussed the emerging energy sector issues, including energy markets, renewables, and electricity system modeling.
The workshop was co-hosted by both CSM and NREL.
PhD Graduate Summer Researcher at NREL
On May 15th of 2023, I officially began my internship at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), working with the Energy Systems Control and Optimization Group under Power Systems Engineering Center (PSEC) in NREL’s south table mountain campus, Golden, CO.
NREL is renowned for its groundbreaking research and innovation in the field of renewable energy. From the moment I stepped foot on the NREL campus, I could feel the palpable passion and commitment to a sustainable future. Working alongside experienced mentors and talented colleagues, I am eager to contribute to the development of renewable energy solutions that will shape our world.
My work at NREL tackles understanding the human-dimension of energy systems. In particular, we aim to devise methods for control of networked systems of possibly non-compliant agents and to establish mathematical tools for the analysis of their performance.
Served as a Judge for Cornell ECE MEng 2023 Poster Competition
It was a fruitful experience serving as a judge for the Cornell ECE MEng 2023 Poster Competition, which was held in Duffield Atrium on May 2nd. Many great projects were evaluated and discussed. Congratulations to all winners.
Energy Engineering Seminar on Net Metering and DER Aggregation
The Cornell Energy Systems Institute (CESI) will be hosting a seminar on our “Net Energy Metering: Past, Future, and Large Scale Aggregations of Distributed Energy Resources” work, which will be presented by Prof. Lang Tong.
The seminar will take place on April 27th, 2023 (12:25—13:15) in 165 Olin Hall.
Attended and Presented at The AI for Energy Research Conference @KAUST
I was awarded a student travel grant to attend and present at the AI for Energy Research Conference at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia (March 6—8, 2023). The conference invited delegates from academia, government laboratories, and industry. The conference was hosted and co-organized by the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC) and the AI initiative at KAUST.
Paper Presentation at TPEC 2023, College Station, TX
On February 13th, I presented our work on “Co-optimizing Behind-The-Meter Resources under Net Metering” at the Texas 2023 Power and Energy Conference, College Station, Texas.
MiSK Fellowship Certificate of Completion
Very happy to conclude the main activities of MiSK Fellowship, which was followed by selecting me as a member in the Saudi Leaders Society (SLS).
During the past six months, I had unique opportunities and experiences to improve leadership and business skills. I had the privilege of connecting with many ambitious and talented young Saudi leaders, whom I also learned about their interests, experiences and aspirations.
OpEd for the UtilityDive on grid access charges
Happy to share that today, my first OpEd piece got published in the UtilityDive — Opinion.
In this OpEd, I present a non-exhaustive list of six reasons why #GAC should not be considered in utility rates.
The piece can be accessed here: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/grid-access-charges-utility-rates-rooftop-solar/641232/
Giving a Talk at ACM SIGEnergy
On Wednesday 01/25/2023, I will be giving a talk at the ACM SIGEnergy Graduate Seminar Series. I will cover our work on the “Analysis of Optimal Prosumer and Regulator Decisions under Net Metering”.
Presentation Zoom link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/93208844846?pwd=M3pITlNoYllQQlhGY2JXcElSMUZOdz09
For more information about the seminar series: https://sites.google.com/view/sigenergy-seminar/home
New arXiv Preprint Alert 🚨
I published a new preprint with Prof. Lang Tong on social optimality for energy communities via a pricing mechanism we called Dynamic Net Energy Metering (DNEM).
Under the proposed mechanism:
community members’ individual surplus maximizations lead to maximum community social welfare.
community members’ individual surplus under Dynamic NEM is higher than the maximum surplus under the utility’s NEM.
the community payment rule satisfies the cost-causation principle.
Preprint link: arXiv.
Preprint title: Achieving Social Optimality for Energy Communities via Dynamic NEM Pricing.
Preprint Abstract: We propose a social welfare maximizing mechanism for an energy community that aggregates individual and shared community resources under a general net energy metering (NEM) policy. Referred to as Dynamic NEM, the proposed mechanism adopts the standard NEM tariff model and sets NEM prices dynamically based on the total shared renewables within the community. We show that Dynamic NEM guarantees a higher benefit to each community member than possible outside the community. We further show that Dynamic NEM aligns the individual member's incentive with that of the overall community; each member optimizing individual surplus under Dynamic NEM results in maximum community's social welfare. Dynamic NEM is also shown to satisfy the cost-causation principle. Empirical studies using real data on a hypothetical energy community demonstrate the benefits to community members and grid operators.
Member of Saudi Leadership Society
I am happy to announce that I have been selected to be a member of the Saudi Leadership Society (SLS) initiative; a prestigious community that connects members with influential Saudi leaders to achieve their greatest leadership potential and become a force in the future.
MiSK Fellowship Annual Competition
My team an I were very pleased to present our project “Shoaa شعاع” at the MiSK Fellowship Annual Competition that was held on Sunday, September 11th.
Our project contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN), primarily on challenges 7 and 9.
The executive summary of our project is provided below:
“ At Shoaa we target developing an adoption-promoting platform consisting of four integrated arms acting collectively to take the customer on the journey from early awareness to the actual installation. The first arm provides customers with visual, audio, and written content to raise awareness and address misconceptions. The second arm equips end-users with the user-friendly tools needed to determine the feasibility and cost of their distributed energy resources installation projects. The third arm focuses on costs by providing end-users with financial solutions enabling them to overcome high installation capital costs. The fourth arm acts as a platform for connecting potential and already-aware end-users to renewable energy sources installers.”
Shoaa.
Shoaa’s contribution to SDG challenges.
New Blog Article
Just published a new blog article — co-authored by Khaled Alshehri — on Participation Models of Distributed Energy Resources — A Brief Look Into Future Energy Markets.
The article can be found here.
Source: Gao et. al. (2021).
Concluded a full-packed summer
As the Fall semester at Cornell kicks in, I look back at the summer marathon I had. Below, I am sharing the main highlights of my full-packed and fruitful summer.
1. I finished my internship at The Brattle Group, Boston, MA as a Summer Associate in the Electricity Practice Area.
a. At Brattle I worked with Dr. Sanem Sergici on problems related to i) Net Energy Metering (NEM) policy evolution, b) Electric vehicles adoptions patterns, focussing on higher locational granularity, and c) innovative bill affordability program designs. I was both happy and lucky to learn from and exchange ideas with experts and bright minds at Brattle.
3. Completed and arXived a new manuscript on “Co-optimizing Distributed Energy Resources in Linear Complexity under Net Energy Metering“.
a. The paper can be accessed at: arXiv.
b. The paper’s abstract is given below:
The co-optimization of behind-the-meter distributed energy resources is considered for residential and commercial prosumers. The distributed energy resources include renewable generations, flexible demands, and battery storage. An energy management system schedules the consumptions and battery storage based on locally available stochastic renewables by maximizing the expected operation surplus under the net energy metering tariff. A stochastic dynamic programming formulation is introduced for which structural properties of the dynamic optimization are derived. A closed-form scheduling of co-optimized consumption and storage is proposed, which achieves optimality when the storage capacity constraint is nonbinding. The closed-form solution results in a linear-complexity storage-consumption co-optimization that can be implemented in a decentralized fashion. The economic benefits of the prosumers and the distribution system operator are evaluated in numerical simulations.
Attended The MiSK Leadership Bootcamp
It was a pleasure attending the wonderful MiSK leadership Bootcamp in London, which is part of the MiSK Fellowship program. The program offers a unique experience in developing 60 future leaders, whom were selected from a pool of +6000 applicants.
Part of the leadership Bootcamp series was provided by the Inspirational Development Group (IDG) team. The MiSK Fellowship program partners include Bain&Company, The Research Development and Innovation Authority in Saudi Arabia, The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in Saudi Arabia, the United Nations (UN), BAE Systems, Strategy&, among others.
Featured by MiSK Leadership
The 5th cohort of the MiSK Fellowship program includes 60 fellows out of thousands applied.
Featured by The Brattle Group
The Brattle group’s Instagram account featured me and my fellow research analyst and associates in a post. The Instagram post link is given here.
Seminar at The Caltech Rigorous System Research Group (RSRG)
Our work on “Behind-the-Meter Distributed Energy Resources under Net Energy Metering” was featured in a seminar at the Caltech Rigorous System Research Group (RSRG). The event was sponsored by the Computing + Mathematical Sciences Department.
The abstract of the talk is provided below:
Net energy metering (NEM) is one of the major driving forces behind the phenomenal growth of the behind-the-meter distributed energy resources. By charging net consumptions and crediting net productions at the same retail rate, the original implementation of NEM, a.k.a. NEM 1.0, offers exceptional incentives for distributed solar adoptions. However, the benefits to prosumers raise revenue adequacy concerns for the utility and equity issues of cross-subsidies of prosumers by consumers. Currently, variations of NEM 1.0, broadly referred to as NEM 2.0 and NEM 3.0, have been proposed, implemented, and heatedly debated in the U.S.
This work aims to gain analytical insights into the impacts of NEM policies on prosumer and consumer behavior, social welfare distribution, cross-subsidies of prosumers by consumers, and the market potential of DER adoptions. To this end, we propose NEM X, an inclusive parametric model that captures key characteristics of all NEM tariffs. We then obtain analytical characterizations of the optimal prosumer decisions on consumption and DER resources, including behind-the-meter generation and storage. Under a stochastic Ramsey pricing framework that maximizes the social welfare subject to the revenue adequacy constraint of a regulated utility, the performance of NEM X is analyzed. Our results highlight tradeoffs among achieving economic efficiency, equity between consumer and prosumer groups, and the market potential of DER adoption.
Accepted Manuscript at ACM SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review
Our manuscript entitled “Integrating Distributed Energy Resources: Optimal Prosumer Decisions and Impacts of Net Metering Tariffs“ has been accepted at the ACM SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review (EIR). The manuscript information and abstract are provided below:
Full Reference:
A. S. Alahmed, L. Tong, “Integrating Distributed Energy Resources: Optimal Prosumer Decisions and Impacts of Net Metering Tariffs”, accepted at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review (EIR), Apr., 2022 (arXiv).
Abstract:
The rapid growth of the behind-the-meter (BTM) distributed generation has led to initiatives to reform the net energy metering (NEM) policies to address pressing concerns of rising electricity bills, fairness of cost allocation, and the long-term growth of distributed energy resources. This article presents an analytical framework for the optimal prosumer consumption decision using an inclusive NEM X tariff model that covers existing and proposed NEM tariff designs. The structure of the optimal consumption policy lends itself to near closed-form optimal solutions suitable for practical energy management systems that are responsive to stochastic BTM generation and dynamic pricing. The short and long-run performance of NEM and feed-in tariffs (FiT) are considered under a sequential rate-setting decision process. Also presented are numerical results that characterize social welfare distributions, cross-subsidies, and long-run solar adoption performance for selected NEM and FiT policy designs.
