Applying Energy Justice Principles to Renewable Energy Trading and Allocation in Multi-Unit Buildings

Abstract

Although rooftop PV panels and battery energy storage systems have been well established for detached residential buildings, there is still a lack of access to the advantages of onsite renewable energy generation and consumption for residents of multi-unit buildings. To understand the effects of developing distributed renewable energy sources for multi-unit buildings, a new fair energy-sharing model in which different groups of residents can gain benefit from the shared energy systems is proposed. Despite the potential benefits of developing renewable technologies in multi-unit buildings, the energy trading and allocation processes in the buildings can be unfair for some groups of residents. Accordingly, this work studies the main principles of energy justice and analyses how these principles can be applied in the energy trading and allocation processes to achieve fair energy sharing. In addition to fairness and justice, the experimental results show that our method increases the sellers’ profit by 59.7–127% and decreases the buyers’ cost by 8–21%, compared to the baseline methods. Moreover, applying the energy justice principles in the proposed sharing models acts as an efficient incentive for the residents of the multi-unit buildings to invest in the shared distributed renewable energy sources.