The Sharing Economy for the Smart Grid The sharing economy. It is all the rage. Going on vacation? Rent out your home for extra income! Have space in your car? Pick up passengers for extra income! Companies such as AirBnB, VRBO, Lyft, and Uber have disrupted housing and transportation sectors. Their innovative business models are based on resource sharing that leverage underutilized infrastructure. They are enabled by peer-to-peer platforms that match eager sellers with willing buyers. Are there compelling sharing economy opportunities in the electricity sector? What products can be shared in tomorrow's Smart Grid? In this talk, we begin by exploring sharing economy opportunities in the electricity sector. We discuss regulatory and technical challenges to these opportunities. We then study the specific problem of a collection of firms sharing their electricity storage. We show that the investment decisions of the firms form a Nash equilibrium which supports the social welfare. We offer explicit expression for optimal storage investments and equilibrium prices for shared storage in a spot market. We discuss control technology platforms necessary for the physical exchange of power, and market platforms necessary to trade electricity storage. We then explore the promise of trading excess PV generation in a sharing economy. We argue that this approach encourages investment in renewables, without imposing unsustainable tariff structures such as net-metering. We suggest that a location-based solar subsidy policy can maximize the social welfare of PV producers. The Clean Energy Institute Interdisciplinary Seminar Series was established to bring distinguished leaders in the field of clean energy to campus to present their research and meet students, postdocs, and faculty from departments across the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Engineering, and the Environment. |