Optimal Coordination and Discount Allocation in Residential Renewable Energy Communities with Smart Home Appliances

TL;DR

This paper develops an optimal management strategy for residential renewable energy communities with smart appliances, aiming to minimize costs and fairly distribute government incentives based on shared renewable energy consumption.

Contribution

It introduces a novel management algorithm for coordinating smart home appliances in renewable communities, optimizing energy costs and incentive distribution.

Findings

Significant cost reduction potential demonstrated through simulations

Effective coordination of appliances enhances renewable energy utilization

Fair incentive distribution aligns with community energy sharing

Abstract

This paper proposes an optimal management strategy for a Renewable Energy Community defined according to the Italian legislation. The specific case study is composed by a set of houses equipped with smart appliances, that share a PV plant. The objective is to minimize the cost of electrical energy use for each member of the community, taking into account the discount achievable from government incentives with proper shaping of the community daily consumption. Such incentives are indeed proportional to the shared energy, i.e. the portion of the renewable energy consumed at each hour by community members. The management algorithm allows an optimal coordination of houses power demands, according to the degree of flexibility granted by users. Moreover, a policy to fairly distribute the obtained discount is introduced. Simulation results show the potentialities of the approach.