*2.1. Prosumer Definition and Configuration*

Historically, the term "prosumer" was first mentioned in 1980 in Alvin Toffler's book *The Third Wave* [17]. In this book, the author discusses the transition of society from an Industrial Era in which production and consumption were separated to the Information Era. In this new concept of society, the term prosumer is created by combining a producer and a consumer. Nowadays, with the increase of integration of PVs in DNs, the notion of prosumer and prosumerism has become increasingly significant in electrical engineering [18]. Therefore, many authors propose the definition of a prosumer. The authors in [19–21] define a prosumer as an end-user that consumes electrical energy, acts as an energy producer, and shares surplus energy with utility networks and other consumers. In [22], prosumers are described as energy consumers or energy producers in different periods depending on their electricity demand and price. The focus is on the prosumer that only generates electricity. In [23,24], the authors include a facility for electricity generation and energy storage systems in the prosumer definition. The definition of prosumer was expanded in [25,26] and includes consumers that generate electricity and/or contain in their configuration home energy management systems (EMS), ESS, electric vehicles (EVs), and electric vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems. In [27], a prosumer has been deemed as a consumer or an electricity producer and can be actively managed.

The European Union defined an active consumer uniform in its 2016 directive [28]. According to [28,29], an active consumer is "a customer or a group of jointly acting customers who consume, store or sell electricity generated on their premises, including through aggregators, or participate in demand response or energy efficiency schemes provided that these activities do not constitute their primary commercial or professional activity".

While a variety of definitions of the term prosumer have been suggested, this paper uses the following definition: a prosumer is an entity that not only withdraws/retracts energy from a network but also produces energy that can be consumed, stored or sold to the network and other consumers and actively participates in providing more flexibility such as voltage and reactive power control.

Prosumer configuration and interconnection with DN is shown in Figure 1. The main representative of distributed generation is the PV system. It often includes an ESS such as a battery in its configuration and together forms a hybrid system. EVs, electric V2G vehicles, smart home EMS, and other flexible loads represent demand-side management (DSM).

**Figure 1.** Prosumer configuration and interconnection with DNs.
