top of page

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:

Icone téléphone.png

+32 (0) 65 37 42 17

Icone bureau.png

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

bottom of page