I.T., Optimized energy systems and new customer services. The deregulated electricity market and the Ronneby case

摘要

This thesis concerns the utilization of information technology to obtain optimized energy systems and the increasing dependence on IT applications within the power industry in general, and especially within electricity. Based on energy system optimizations, industrial simulations, interviews and literature surveys, the thesis concludes that information technology is a condition for optimized energy systems. Through large-scale load control, enabled by IT, the energy system cost for supplying a local energy system can be reduced considerably. Diurnal energy system optimizations further illustrate the increased utilization of load control, accentuated, when customers are exposed to the variations of the spot market price. Thereby, the increased need for load management on a deregulated market, where real time pricing is applied, is mirrored. However, given the boundary conditions of the deregulated electricity market, optimization of energy systems is no condition for competitiveness within electricity sales. This study also points out that, apart from industrial customers, other market actors, like electricity sales companies and local distributors, have few incentives to introduce load control. Distributors mainly lose money on power reducing measures, except for when there are distribution limitations. Neither do electricity sales companies make short-term earnings from large-scale load control. The combination with small economic savings for residential customers make the financing of large- scale load control problematic. Regarding electricity sales companies, increased IT utilization is observed to enable marketing and service offerings on the Internet, and IT-based value-added services (VAS). For pure communication services, the sales companies utilize IT to offer telephone services (analogue technique) and Internet access, the latter is sometimes performed on the electricity grid. Extended IT-systems for customer administration, customer service, and market analyses are consequences of the competition and of aggressive corporate energy expansion. Due to the introduction of other IT-based services, load control is likely to become utilized as well, since this information flow might piggy-back on the costs of other more attractive services for the customers. Thereby, as a side effect, the deregulation may also lead to more optimized energy systems. 87 refs, figs.