Design Space Exploration for the Profitability of a Rule-Based Aggregator Business Model Within a Residential Microgrid

The microgrid has been shown to be profitable, reliable, and efficient for military, commercial, and university-like installations. However, until now, there has been no study to show how and when a residential microgrid may be profitable. Therefore, in this paper, we present a design space exploration methodology of the microgrid by modeling all the energy resources at the residential level and conducting numerous simulations with various parameters. Moreover, a set of rules are defined to make the stakeholders in the microgrid profitable. Also, by analyzing the number of houses in the microgrid, we observe that the number of years it takes to return the capital costs invested in the microgrid may become adequately short for a certain range of the number of houses. For instance, if the aggregator owns the renewable energy resources, e.g., solar panels, it may profit in less than five years when 500 houses participate in the microgrid where each house owns 500 sf solar panels. On the other hand, if the prosumers own the renewable energy resources, e.g., solar panels, the aggregator may profit in about a year. Typically, for an apartment-block type housing area in U.S. there are more than 1000 houses, therefore the aggregator profitability may improve furthermore.