Julien Allard
PhD researcher

Research activity:
Biography:
Julien Allard graduated with a master's degree in Electro-mechanical Engineering in june 2022, specialized in Energy from Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium. Since September 2022, he started a PhD Thesis in the Power Systems & Markets Research Group, Department of Electrical Power Engineering (UMONS).
His research interests include Modelling, Optimization and Game Theory for Energy Systems and Renewables Energy Communities.
Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) consist in organized entities gathering consumers and prosumers
connected to the public electricity distribution network, who are allowed to exchange energy locally, without
resorting to the traditional wholesale market structure. They aim at fostering local private investment in
renewable energy production and at mobilizing flexibility available in distribution networks to improve the selfconsumption and the self-sufficiency of the members. Citizens are interested in RECs since they can reap
financial, ecological and social benefits through the mutualization of resources and the coordinated investment
in energy resources. The massive roll-out of RECs on the electricity distribution grids entails impacts of various
natures, i.e. technical, economical, regulatory as well as legal, which still need to be correctly quantified.
Different time horizons must be considered for favouring the uptake of RECs. The day-ahead scheduling
operates the existing community energy assets while mutualizing resources in the community to minimize the
community objective. However, the day-ahead schedules face real-time deviations that must be accounted in
the final energy bills of REC members, via the settlement problem. Finally, the optimal sizing and investment in
local energy resources must be coupled with short-term models in order to better reflect operational costs. The
goal of this project is to propose optimization-based models and methods embracing all time-horizons (from
long-term investment to intraday settlement) for the organization of renewable energy communities. The two
main objectives are:
1) Develop innovative investment models for the optimal sizing of energy assets in RECs, able to account for
the new financing mechanisms which will appear in communities.
2) Develop innovative energy exchange settlement methods and models to account for the real-time deviations
of the energy assets usage from their optimal day-ahead schedule.
Office location:
Contact:


+32 (0) 65 37 42 17


Electrical Power Engineering Unit
Boulevard Dolez, 31
7000 Mons (Belgium)