Stochastic shaping of aggregator energy and reserve bids to ensure network security

Rising market participation of DER through aggregators increases the risk of network constraint violation at the distribution level. Existing approaches to network-secure DER coordination often require centralised resource management/oversight, or involve complex iterative negotiations between prosumers and the distribution service operator (DSO). In response to industry needs for readily-implementable solutions, we propose a straightforward network-secure bid curtailment approach performed by DSOs, allowing for separation of DSO and aggregator roles while factoring aggregator preferences communicated through bids. In extension to previous work, our approach directly maximises expected aggregator benefit in the market by factoring forecast market prices and bid prices into the objective. We mitigate risks of inaccurate market forecasts using a price-probabilistic stochastic program, bringing benefit to within 1% of the perfect information case in our simulations using real data. We demonstrate a 9% improvement in aggregator benefit compared to related approaches, with further gains available through real-reactive power co-optimisation. •Aggregators are increasingly bidding for network support services using DER.•Our proposed DN curtailment approach ensures network-feasible market outcomes.•DSO curtails energy-reserve bids maximising aggregator benefit using market prices.•Operating envelopes determined through OPF co-optimise use of real and reactive power.•Stochastic extension uses expected price distributions to improve aggregator benefit.