Analysis of Carbon Neutrality Scenarios of Industrial Consumers Using Electric Power Market Simulations

Abstract

This study analyzed various electricity procurement scenarios for a factory in terms of carbon neutrality, using multi-agent simulations. We performed a multi-agent simulation with power-consuming and power-generating agents to simulate the electric power market. Additionally, we developed a factory model reflecting the actual electricity consumption patterns and implemented multiple electricity procurement methods for the factory: market procurements, photovoltaic power generation (PV), fuel cells (FC), and batteries. Using this simulation model, we analyzed the total ${\textrm{CO}}_{2}$ emissions and total cost of carbon neutrality by changing the factory’s capacity for PV, FC, batteries, and the generation cost of FC. As a result, we found that batteries can enhance the effects of PV. Furthermore, unfortunately, when the capacity of the batteries is larger, the generation cost of FC for FC activation will be required to become lower, which leads to a discussion of the future price target of FC. Our study successfully demonstrated that realistic multi-agent simulations enable complex phenomenon analyses.