Sharing Mobile and Stationary Energy Storage Resources in Transactive Energy Communities

TL;DR

This paper proposes a transactive energy market framework for community microgrids that leverages stationary and mobile energy storage to enhance renewable energy utilization and reduce costs.

Contribution

It introduces a novel transactive energy sharing model incorporating both stationary and mobile storage resources within community microgrids.

Findings

Increased renewable self-consumption at building and community levels.

Reduced electricity costs through energy sharing.

Effective coordination of energy resources in a real community setting.

Abstract

Most power systems are increasingly based on distributed energy resources, leading to a strong impact on the electrical grid management. In the case of Portugal, the contribution of renewable energy sources to the electricity generation portfolio is already high and the objective is to achieve 100% by 2050. Most of the new renewable generation capacity will be ensured by distributed photovoltaic generation installed in buildings and therefore the inherent intermittence of photovoltaic output combined with a mismatch with demand profile will challenge the operation and resiliency of the electrical grid. Addressing these issues requires management at the community level and the leveraging of spatio-temporal flexibility of controllable energy resources, such as energy storage resources. This is recognized by the regulators in Portugal and the recent renewable generation self-consumption legislation enables generation-surplus trading in communities. Implementing intra-community trading and utilizing the potentials of renewable generation requires oversight and coordination at the community level in the context of transactive energy systems. This paper focuses on addressing energy sharing through a transactive energy market in community microgrids, using stationary and mobile energy storage as flexibility resources. The proposed framework considers public and commercial buildings with on-site battery storage and numerous electric vehicle charging stations. The formulation is assessed using real data from a community of buildings on a Portuguese University campus. The results showcase that the proposed method achieves an increase in renewable self-consumption at building and community levels, as well as a reduction in electricity costs.