Optimization-based energy sharing among customers for enhanced resilience in a community microgrid

Abstract

Distributed Energy Resources (DER) provides a unique opportunity to support communities in powering electric loads in case of wide spread power outages for a prolonged period. We propose an energy sharing approach among customers to supply load after a wide-spread and sustained power outage, leveraging rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) generation. An optimization-based algorithm is proposed to facilitate the energy sharing approach, with an objective function designed to ensure rationality of individual participation. By means of a case study, we show that community sharing of DER resources enables more electricity to be supplied to each customer than what could be achieved if customers operated in isolation from one another.