PROMOTING DISTRIBUTED ENERGY DEPLOYMENT AND DIFFUSION FOR SUSTAINABLE CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE USING MULTI-AGENT BASED MODELING AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYTICS
"Distributed Solar Generation (DSG) using small-scale Photo-Voltaic (PV) is an evolving technology with increasingly growing market penetration due to its significant benefits to consumers and broader power systems. DSG is sustainable, provides reliability, and is cost-effective where solar energy is abundant. However, the increasingly growing adoption of DSG creates uncertainties in forecasting electric power demand and market behavior. It also causes concerns of a “utility death spiral”. To this end, the goal of this research is to critically analyze the diffusion and benefits of DSG in the electric power infrastructure as a complex System-of-Systems (SoS). Specifically, this dissertation addresses the following five objectives: (1) investigating the relationship between the electric power sector and socio-economic parameters; (2) developing a complex simulation of electric power infrastructure and market impacted by the adoption of DSG; (3) exploring dynamic pricing by generating companies and the occurrence of a utility death spiral; (4) studying the impact of incentives on the adoption of DSG using complex sensitivity analysis; and (5) examining the benefits of DSG in reducing the vulnerability of the power infrastructure against natural disasters. As such, and as shown from the results, this research provided a novel holistic investigation of the complex relationship between DSG adoption and the electric power market and infrastructure in a multidisciplinary approach that combines infrastructure engineering, electric power engineering, economics, social science, machine learning, and computer modeling. The findings should benefit researchers, power system operators, and policy makers towards a sustainable DSG diffusion"-- Abstract, p. iv
Agent-Based Modeling, Complex Systems Simulation, Distributed Energy Resources, Distributed Solar Generation, Electric Infrastructure, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations