Modeling Economic Sharing of Joint Assets in Community Energy Projects Under LV Network Constraints

Abstract

The trend of decentralization of energy services has given rise to community energy systems. These energy communities aim to maximize the self-consumption of local renewable energy generated and stored in assets that are typically connected to low-voltage (LV) distribution networks. Energy community schemes often involve jointly owned assets such as community-owned solar photo-voltaic panels (PVs), wind turbines and/or shared battery storage. This raises the question of how these assets should be controlled in real-time, and how the energy outputs from these jointly owned assets should be shared fairly among heterogeneous community members. Crucially, such real-time control and fair sharing of energy must also consider the technical constraints of the community, such as the local LV network characteristics, voltage limits and power ratings of electric cables and transformers. In this paper, we design and analyze a heuristic-based battery control algorithm that considers the influence of battery life degradation, and the resultant increase in local renewable energy consumption within local operating constraints of the LV network. We provide a model that first studies the techno-economic benefits of community-owned versus individually-owned energy assets considering the network/grid constraints. Then, using the methodology and principles from cooperative game theory, we propose a redistribution model for benefits in a community based on the marginal contribution of each household. The results from our study demonstrate that the redistribution mechanism is fairer and computationally tractable compared to the existing state-of-the-art methods. Thus, our methodology is more scalable with respect to modelling the economic sharing of joint assets in community energy systems.

Analysis of a Legal Regulation Approach and Strategy of a Sharing Economy Based on Technological Change and Sustainable Development

“…Norbu et al [17] introduced a battery-control technique based on heuristics for shared resources in community energy projects. One of the main plans for energy in home-based communities is presented.…”

Efficient methods for approximating the shapley value for asset sharing in energy communities

“…This will allow for further validation of the robustness of the approximation methods. On the modelling side, looking into the case of physical capacity constraints (voltage, power) on the local distribution network, similarly to [8], would be interesting. Such a case can lead to changes in coalitional games and the computation of fairly redistributed costs with Shapley value.…”

Real-Time Control of Distributed Batteries With Blockchain-Enabled Market Export Commitments

“…However, a key barrier for faster adoption of home batteries is their economic cost, which can be above £6000 [2]. Furthermore, home battery capacity is often under-utilised at the individual domestic consumer level, and for this reason they are not cost-effective [3]. For example, although small batteries can have a reasonable investment recovery (payback) period [4], currently commercialised residential battery systems used solely for self-consumption in Europe or in the US have an investment recovery period ranging from 15 to 20 years, which is economically unattractive for domestic consumers [5]- [8].…”