Community solar photovoltaic service strategy for commercial buildings considering profit balancing and fairness

Abstract

A community solar photovoltaic (PV) system is an effective way to save energy bills in commercial buildings. In such systems, the main problems are how to serve the shared resources considering profit balancing and profit-sharing fairness. In this study, a community solar PV service strategy for commercial buildings is introduced, which does not only pursue profit maximization for the entire community, but also considers two additional issues, namely, the profit balancing between the PV service provider (SP) and participants and the profit-sharing fairness among the participants. A profit-balancing factor is defined as a representation of the nature of the SP, and the profit maximization model, considering fair profit-sharing, is applied. By applying the Lagrangian relaxation and dual ascent method, the optimal solution is achieved in an iterative manner. A case study shows that participants can save 50 and 40% of their total energy bill when the service is operated with the objective of profit maximization and proportional fairness, respectively. The proportional-fairness operation enhances the Jain’s fairness index up to 51% compared with the profit-maximization operation. The effects on the profit and fairness for various service methods are explored to provide guidance in designing community solar PV services.