Modeling of Independent Energy Communities Sharing the Same Distribution Network

Recent regulatory frameworks in several countries are introducing energy communities, which are collectives of prosumers and users that exchange active power while maintaining independence. Users are free to join or not, and to choose their electricity retailer. This paper considers the presence of multiple communities in the same distribution network (as allowed by regulation) and presents a model that independently optimize the operation of each community and manages network constraints. The price of the energy transactions between community members are determined as shadow prices of balancing constraints. Day-ahead scheduling results are presented for different community configurations and data sets from a real 15 kV distribution network. The paper analyzes the electricity procurement costs of both community members and non-members. The results show the effectiveness in reducing both energy procurement costs and noncompliance costs for each community. The sensitivity analysis on the number of ECs shows that as the number of ECs increases, cost reductions and penalties decrease, approaching the case without internal transactions within ECs.