PV energy sharing cloud: Towards automatic pricing and energy management

Abstract

According to the energy policy for encouraging local consumption of photovoltaic (PV) energy, the energy sharing among PV prosumers could be more beneficial than the independent operation of PV prosumers. In order to improve the energy sharing at the community level, a concept of PV energy sharing cloud is proposed, which consists of self-organizing, auto-pricing and distributed optimization. Based on the physical access point of PV prosumers on the utility grid, the PV prosumers can be separated into a number of clusters. A day-ahead auto-pricing of shared PV energy is proposed for different clusters. A cost model for PV prosumers is proposed, which enables the PV prosumers participate in the Demand Response (DR). In order to implement the interaction between the cloud and prosumers, a distributed optimization algorithm is utilized. Finally, via a practical example, the effectiveness of the method is verified in terms of saving PV prosumers' cost and improve the sharing of the PV energy.