An ADMM approach for day-ahead scheduling of a local energy community

The paper deals with the day-ahead operational planning of a grid-connected local energy community (LEC) consisting of several prosumers each equipped with generating units, loads and battery energy storage units. The prosumers are connected to the same low-voltage distribution network. In order to preserve, as much as possible, the confidentiality of the features and forecast of prosumers' equipment, the problem is addressed by designing a specific distributed procedure based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). The distributed procedure provides the scheduling of the batteries to limit the balancing action of the external grid. Results obtained for various case studies are compared with those obtained by a centralized approach. The values of the objective function, the profiles of the power exchanged with the utility grid and the profile of the energy stored in the batteries provided by the distributed approach are in close agreement with those calculated by the centralized one.