Abstract

In conventional energy systems, the synchronization of power generation and consumption is largely handled by thermal power plants. The increasing share of volatile renewable energy generation which does not follow the demand, makes it necessary to shift the synchronization tasks to the system and demand level. The intended demand side consumption management is usually incentivized via financial mechanisms. However, the optimum design of related incentives is still unclear. It is usually discussed under the term "system friendliness" which in turn still lacks a broadly accepted definition. In this article we introduce a new technical definition of "system friendliness" and develop comprehensive and holistic related indicators. Our findings demonstrate that today's regulatory environments that usually support residential self-consumption maximization are counterproductive. Instead, we show that dynamic end-user prices coupled with dynamic feed in tariffs are able to incentivize an almost 100% system friendly behavior of distributed prosumers.