Energy-sharing mechanisms for energy community members under different asset ownership schemes and user demand profiles

Abstract

Renewable Energy Communities are aggregations of final users/prosumers whose energy comes from renewable power generators. This work systematically assesses the rules of the current and new approaches to sharing the generated benefits obtainable from renewable energy production and its consumption among members of a virtual net-metering energy community. In this work, three sharing mechanism algorithms are proposed to distribute the energy community net profit among the members, utilizing a Token currency, in proportion to the service they provide: financing service, self-consumption service, and both financing and self-consumption services. An energy community, comprising of 100 households and supplied by a 100 kWp photovoltaic system, has been simulated. Six scenarios were designed to determine how profits could be shared between users and prosumers. We focused on the impact that the adoption of a specific sharing mechanism could have on the different categories of members (e.g., low-energy users, high-energy users with ownership, etc.).