A Foundational Design Methodology for Digital Twins in Local Energy Markets

Local energy markets (LEMs) face challenges such as incentivizing users and balancing local energy generation and demand. Digital twins (DTs) can contribute to LEMs, by providing real-time insights into local generation and demand dynamics, enabling more effective balancing mechanisms. Additionally, DTs can facilitate the optimization of energy trading strategies and the development of innovative incentive schemes to encourage user participation and engagement within LEMs. Research on the design of DTs for LEMs, nevertheless, remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by proposing a foundational design methodology of DTs for LEMs that consists of five phases: i) setting boundaries, ii) gathering requirements and decomposing the physical system, iii) deriving services, iv) examining performance and quality considerations, and v) evaluating the design. The main findings of this research can be seen as a first step on DT design for LEMs, which is a complex task considering the complexity of the physical system and its various requirements and services considerations, and serves as a foundation and guide for future work on DTs for LEMs.