Resumen de Study and assessment of energy policies to achieve consumer centered power systems
The climate crisis requires an energy transition to reduce primary energy consumption and replace fossil fuels with renewable energies while electrifying energy consumption. This energy transition is changing the paradigm of the electricity sector from a system with centralised generation, passive demand, and almost no storage capacity, to a system that will have to adapt to the variability in the use of renewable energy flows. The development of new technologies and the greater flexibility needs that arise from this change imply a new context of decentralized generation, active demand, and the development of storage as an essential system tool. And in this new situation, consumers acquire a central role in the present and future electricity systems.
This doctoral thesis aims to analyse the public policies and regulations that will promote the energy transition within the electricity system where the consumer will play an essential role being at the center of it. The thesis employs a series of transdisciplinary methodologies and tools to address and analyse the three stages of the public policy process: formulation, design, and evaluation.
The main body of the thesis contains four contributions organised in three blocks. The first block, formulation, responds to the first two specific objectives that focus on analysing demand response programs at the international level in a standardised way and quantifying the potential for flexibility in the residential sector. The second, design, responds to the third specific objective, which focuses on analysing the impacts that the regulation to promote self-consumption would have on the electricity system. And the third, evaluation, responds to the fourth specific objective of extracting good practices and improvements on an already implemented public policy that uses industrial demand to provide complementary services to the system. Each of the contributions contains case studies and real policies that have been implemented or are under study. In this way, the thesis addresses the current regulatory issues focused on promoting a new regulatory framework for an energy transition where electricity demand increases its role in the system.
The four contributions presented in this thesis demonstrate the need to continue advancing in the formulation, design, and evaluation. Through a combination of techniques and methodologies, the document shows different ways of approaching the problem to improve public policies aimed at promoting the energy transition from the current energy system to a renewable system with greater participation of citizens and electricity consumers.
