A communication ontology for customer resources in a flexibility market

The residential sector holds many resources able to provide grid flexibility — schedulable loads, energy storage, cogeneration — whose value can be recognised on transactive energy markets. In Quebec, such mechanisms can help manage critical demand events driven by extreme cold, by dispatching flexible resources according to weather forecasts.

As transactive platforms opened up to heterogeneous resources and participants, however, taking part became complex: the sheer number of standards and communication protocols limits how much residential potential can actually be reached. This doctoral project argues that the missing lever is a simple, coherent communication ontology — a shared frame for interpreting the context of an exchange, which makes participation both more attractive and automatable, and opens the way to intelligent agents able to represent users on the markets autonomously.

Main objective

Develop a communication ontology that simplifies residential participation in flexibility markets, accounting for the user's context both in the power system and behind the meter, and analysing the objectives and motivations that drive participation.

Methodology

Four stages: a literature review identifying the gaps in flexibility quantification methods, then development of an approach requiring no prior information about the building or its occupants, so as to remain adaptable across residential settings; design of a first hierarchical ontology built from a classification of existing energy-management ontologies, as a knowledge graph linking appliances, occupant and energy flexibility; integration of user feedback and preferences into the ontology; validation through numerical simulation with peak-reduction and user-satisfaction indicators, plus sensitivity analysis across dwellings.