Modeling economic sharing of joint assets in community energy projects under LV network constraints

Modeling economic sharing of joint assets in community energy projects under LV network constraints

Norbu, Sonam (Heriot-Watt University; Royal University of Bhutan)
Couraud, Benoit (Heriot-Watt University)
Robu, Valentin (TU Delft Algorithmics; Heriot-Watt University; Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI))
Andoni, Merlinda (Heriot-Watt University)
Flynn, David (Heriot-Watt University)

2021

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 modeling the economic sharing of joint assets in community energy systems.

Battery degradation model
coalitional game theory
community energy storage
community vs individual energy assets
energy community
energy sharing mechanism
low-voltage network
network constraints
self-consumption

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b86e2890-5965-4309-ba62-6170d062e303

https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3103480

2169-3536

IEEE Access, 9, 112019-112042

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2021 Sonam Norbu, Benoit Couraud, Valentin Robu, Merlinda Andoni, David Flynn