Agent-based modeling of a rule-based community energy sharing concept

Institute for Applied Research, University of Applied Sciences, Schellingstr. 24, 70174 Stuttgart, Germany.

^* Corresponding author: charitha.heendeniya@hft-stuttgart.de

Abstract

In an energy community, the prosumers’ interactions are critical to ensure efficient use of renewable resources. Local energy sharing concepts where a coordinating agent typically regulates the energy transactions between prosumers intend to achieve such a sharing economy. The coordinating agent, known as the market agent or energy sharing agent, acts according to a set of rules to match the prosumers’ renewable energy surpluses and deficits. This paper describes an agent-based modeling strategy and a case study to demonstrate the interactions in an energy sharing community where each agent individually and collectively attempts to maximize renewable energy self-consumption. The prosumers attempt to achieve their individual and collective objectives by following a two-step rule-based strategy. In the first step, a building-integrated battery storage operation strategy based on a schedule improves the prosumer-level self-consumption while providing grid-friendly behavior. The next step involves an energy sharing strategy and an operating strategy for community-scale battery storage that maximizes the collective selfconsumption. Throughout the transactions, prosumers have no visibility of other prosumers; therefore, the energy sharing coordinator has the sole responsibility of orchestrating the energy exchanges between prosumers. Finally, we discuss the significance and future research outlook for energy interaction modeling at a community scale.