Decentralized Equitable Energy Access in Energy Communities

TL;DR

This paper proposes a decentralized energy scheduling framework that incorporates equity constraints to ensure fair access to energy resources within diverse energy communities, optimizing welfare and access.

Contribution

It introduces a novel decentralized welfare maximization model with equity constraints and develops an optimal pricing policy for equitable energy access.

Findings

Optimal pricing policy characterized with key properties

Decentralized implementation ensures equitable energy access

Enhances welfare in diverse energy communities

Abstract

We address the issue of equitable energy access within an energy community consisting of members with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, including varying income levels and differing capacities to access distributed energy resources such as solar power and storage systems. While optimal energy consumption scheduling is well-studied, integrating equity into decentralized real-time energy access remains under-explored. This paper formulates Equity-regarding Welfare Maximization (EqWM)--a welfare optimization energy scheduling subject to equity constraints. We further develop a decentralized implementation (D-EqWM) as a bi-level optimization, where a non-profit operator designs a community pricing policy aimed at maximizing overall welfare, subject to constraints that ensure equitable access. Community members, in turn, optimize their individual consumption based on these prices. We present the optimal pricing policy along with its key properties.