Optimal energy management strategies for aggregators in renewable energy communities

First introduced in European directives and recently incorporated into the Italian legal framework, Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) are described as innovative organisations that can promote collaboration between active and passive users engaged in the production, sharing and consumption of locally produced energy, according to creative management schemes. The aim of this study is the implementation of Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) models to build Energy Management Systems (EMSs) for an aggregator managing a REC. The REC includes Renewable Energy Sources (RESs), Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs), AC and DC charging points for Electric Vehicles (EVs), and also considers the use of Vehicle-to-Building (V2B). Specifically, the “Centralised” EMS managed by the aggregator has the aim of maximising the energy shared within the REC, while minimising BESS and EV battery degradation. The optimal profiles of active power exchanges with the network are provided as reference inputs to the local EMSs of the users. Two scenarios are considered, a week in May and a week in December, to investigate the impact of different RES productions and electricity demands on energy sharing mechanisms. Through the definition of appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), this work shows that an optimal operation of the distributed energy technologies can improve the REC performance, leading to Shared Energy Index (SEI) up to 92.42% for the considered week of May. Further scenarios are investigated considering mid-season weeks (March and October) and analysing the trade-off between maximising the shared energy and minimising battery degradation of BESSs and EVs. Finally, the impact of the users’ cooperative or non-cooperative behaviour on the global energy sharing is investigated through the analysis of multiple scenarios, varying the centralised EMS awareness about REC members’ behaviour and the configuration in terms of cooperative/non-cooperative users.