Optimal Coordination and Discount Allocation in Residential Renewable Energy Communities with Smart Home Appliances

Abstract: This paper proposes an optimal management strategy for a Renewable Energy Community defined according to the Italian legislation. The specific case study is composed by a set of houses equipped with smart appliances, that share a PV plant. The objective is to minimize the cost of electrical energy use for each member of the community, taking into account the discount achievable from government incentives with proper shaping of the community daily consumption. Such incentives are indeed proportional to the shared energy, i.e. the portion of the renewable energy consumed at each hour by community members. The management algorithm allows an optimal coordination of houses power demands, according to the degree of flexibility granted by users. Moreover, a policy to fairly distribute the obtained discount is introduced. Simulation results show the potentialities of the approach.