(Mohammad) M. Ansarin MSc

Active Projects

My PhD research is about energy cooperatives and their role in the new energy economy. These democratic organizations are formed through voluntary membership, where members invest both time and money into the cooperative’s operations. In an energy cooperative’s case, members actively pursue the end goal of buying or selling energy in a way that suits them best. Other organizations are mostly bound by either regulations or financial interest in ways that cooperatives are not. Although cooperatives seek to be profitable, their decision making also takes members’ preferences into account. Thus, many cooperatives are formed mainly so members consume or produce green energy. There has not been much insight on how industrial groups form and join cooperatives, so this research focuses more on energy cooperatives in commercial and industrial settings, such as the Port of Rotterdam. I look at how market forces, business models, and regulations influence this organizational form’s usefulness in the renewable energy era.

I also spend some time on another project, where we analyze and improve the Power Trading Agent Competition. Power TAC is a competitive simulation of the electricity grid, where brokers compete to become the most profitable trader of electricity in a distribution grid’s markets (More info at powertac.org). The simulation allows brokers to sign up retail-side customers via tariffs, buy electricity in bulk on a wholesale market, and also control various demand response resources to balance demand and supply. We look at market dynamics and broker behavior within the competition and search for real-world insight.