Management of Energy Storage in Transactive Energy Communities

The energy sector has been evolving towards a more sustainable model in which renewables, energy storage systems and energy communities play an important role in a successful energy transition. In the near future, a large share of small-scale renewable distributed generation is expected to be deployed in buildings, leading to a mismatch between generation and demand which needs to be addressed with energy flexibility options. In such a context, the use of energy management systems endowed with adequate control algorithms will be crucial for leveraging the spatio-temporal flexibility of controllable energy resources. This paper proposes a framework for the optimization of energy storage in a transactive energy community on a Portuguese University Campus. The used methodology ensures economic benefits with the management of dedicated storage systems coupled with renewable generation systems. The considered constraints include mechanisms to encourage renewable generation surplus sharing within the community and that export and import power flows between the building and the community are limited to the net energy demand in the building, maximum (dis)charging power of the storage systems, the minimum and maximum state of charge, among others. Results showed that the proposed framework achieves an increase in renewable self-consumption at building and community levels, as well as a reduction in electricity costs.