Improving community-based electricity markets regulation: A holistic multi-objective optimization framework

Abstract

Community-based electricity markets, which are defined as groups of members that share common interests in renewable distributed generation, allow prosumers to embrace more active roles by opening up several opportunities for trading electricity. At the same time, such markets may favor conventional consumers by allowing them to choose cheaper electricity providers. Due to trends in power sector modernization, community-based electricity markets are of great research interest, and there are already some associated models. However, there is a research gap in searching for integrated and holistic approaches that go beyond economic aspects, consider social and environmental aspects, and assume the balanced co-existence of community-based and conventional markets. This work fills this critical research gap by adapting/applying the optimized tariff model, Bass diffusion model, life cycle assessment, and multi-objective optimization to the context of community-based markets. Results indicate that favoring conventional markets in the short term and community-based markets in the medium term is beneficial. Moreover, regulated tariffs should increase slightly in the short/medium-term to accommodate DG growth. Additionally, community-based markets can decrease electricity expenses by around 13.6 % considering the market participants. Thus, such markets can be significantly beneficial in mitigating energy poverty.