Post Facto Calculation of Peer to Peer Transactions: Proportional and Preferential Energy Sharing Models

Abstract

Global rooftop solar grows at a rate of 20.14% annually, according to global solar consortium energypedia. Conventionally prosumers sell excess solar generated to the utility grid using a feed-in-tariff policy. Feed-in-tariff policy is effective if the grid is the only customer, but prosumers with peer-to-peer (P2P) tariff mechanism yield better profits to prosumers and energy savings to consumers. Existing P2P energy-sharing models are computationally intensive and have scalability issues. Further it’s difficult to implement in the real world. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes two post-facto P2P energy-sharing models. One is the preferential energy sharing model (PES) where consumer and prosumer pairs are ranked based on energy generated and consumed. The second model is the proportional energy sharing model (PRES) where consumer energy generated and consumed are shared proportionally. Both models are illustrated using seasonal variations by comparing with feed-in tariff policy and observed an effective reduction of bills for consumers and increased profit of prosumers. The results concluded that microgrids with excess solar will profit more when they are in the PRES model, whereas microgrids with significant demand will benefit when they are in the PES model. Further, PRES model executes in 107 milliseconds, and the PES model executes in 52 milliseconds. These results show that the proposed models are computationally less intensive and easily scalable.