ORFLEX: Open Platform for Rapid Testing and Deploying Local Flexibility Markets

Local Flexibility Markets (LFMs) play a crucial role in modern electrical grids as they can address grid congestion by efficiently exploiting demand-side flexibility through market-clearing algorithms and incentive signals. However, demo projects worldwide offer limited access to detailed information that enables a good understanding of market design, estimating computational requirements, and exploring different algorithms at multiple levels. Accordingly, This paper introduces ORFLEX, an open-source platform for rapid testing and deploying local flexibility markets. ORFLEX exhibits salient features, including scalability, agile deployment, and secure interactions by leveraging cloud and edge infrastructure and Functions as a Service (FaaS). The platform aims to provide a go-to guide for LFM implementation. The proposal was validated using a straightforward market with a hierarchical configuration involving a market operator, a spot market aggregator, and many flexumers. Experimental results revealed the systems’s ability to assist in large-scale deployments while increasing the number of participants on the demand side. The methodical simulation insights will help market designers and regulators to properly develop LFMs and analyze the impacts of different clearing and demand-side flexibility estimations.