This technical report presents an overview of the shaped operating envelope concept, its implementation in the project, and simulations to illustrate the potential benefits over a more conventional approach to operating envelopes.
Report extract
Dynamic operating envelopes (DOEs) are a class of techniques for allocating constrained distribution network capacity to aggregators and / or end customers. The key feature is the calculation and allocation of time-varying power envelopes either per customer or for regional aggregates of customers. With an appropriate allocation across many participants, DOEs can ensure the network does not become overloaded by distributed energy resources (DER).
In most networks there is not just one way to allocate envelopes while ensuring that network limits are met; rather, there is an uncountable number of ways. Some of these envelope allocations are objectively better than others when considering impacts beyond network constraints. Particularly, the choice affects how much freedom DER have to act and how well-utilised the network is.