Electricity Cost-Sharing in Energy Communities Under Dynamic Pricing and Uncertainty

Abstract

Most of the prosumers nowadays are constrained to trade only with the supplier under a flat tariff or dynamic time-of-use price signals. This paper models and discusses the cost-saving benefits of flexible prosumers as members of energy communities who can exchange electricity among peers and on the wholesale markets through a community manager. Authors propose a novel centralized post-process sharing method by introducing a two-stage mechanism which, unlike the existing methods, guarantees benefits for prosumers joining the energy community. The first stage assesses internal price calculation in three different methods: Bill Sharing Method Net (BSMN), Mid-Market Rate Net (MMRN), and Supply-Demand Ratio Net (SDRN). In their original form, prices are calculated in a single stage and the comprehensive analyses in the paper show that some members face increased cost. To solve this issue, the paper improves the methods by introducing the second stage in which the compensation methodology is defined for the distribution of savings which ensures that all community members gain benefits. Results investigate the value of inner technical flexibility of the prosumer (flexible preferences of the final consumer can reduce the cost from 3% up to 20 %). Moreover, incentives/penalties encourage the utilization of a flexible behavior to adjust the real-time consumption of prosumers' appliances to a predefined day-ahead schedule. This type of pricing results in a lower amount of benefits sharing in the community (the reduction of 18-47% in MMRN and 49-114% in SDRN compared to existing pricing) which makes this incentives/penalties pricing more preferable. The paper concludes that prosumers with an excess PV production would not benefit from the internal energy exchange in the community under BSMN due to free energy exchange between members.