Peer-to-Peer Energy Sharing Model for Interconnected Home Microgrids

Abstract

With the growth in residential rooftop microgrids (MGs), consumers are becoming prosumers. Prosumers tend to inject the excess solar-generated into the grid. This leads to an increase in people participating in the electricity market. Under this scenario, market clearance is one of the major challenges for electricity markets. Apart from selling power to the grid with the advent of peer to peer mechanisms for energy transactions, the number of transactions in the electricity market is increasing. In this context, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate the savings maximization for a prosumer using peer to peer mechanism. This paper proposes two models for energy sharing in p2p mechanism, namely (i) preferential energy sharing and (ii) proportional energy sharing. Preferential energy sharing mechanism where the prosumer with high solar availability is given the higher priority in selling the power either to the community or to the grid. Proportional energy sharing divides the energy proportionally based on solar power injection and consumption. A comparison study among the two mechanisms is performed considering four MGs, and grid time of use pricing is considered. It is observed that preferential sharing provides a reduction in the electricity bill of 4.36 % when compared to selling to grid. Similarly, proportional energy sharing results in 5.81 % reduction in the electricity bills. Based on these observations, it is concluded that proportional energy sharing peer to peer mechanism will result in more amount of energy savings.