Volume 28: Closing Carbon Cycles – A Transformation Process Involving Technology, Economy, and Society: Part III

A MILP Model for the Design Optimization of Energy Communities Vincenzo Dipierro, Riccardo Malabarba, Michele Rossi, Emanuele Martelli

Abstract

Energy communities are considered a key element in the transition towards more sustainable energy systems. Indeed, the final consumers are encouraged to form communities to share the locally produced renewable electricity. In such a prospective, this work proposes a novel Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation for the design optimization of energy communities: given a set of buildings/prosumers of a district, the model allows optimizing the number of energy communities and the selection of prosumers/buildings to be included in each community with the objective of maximizing the economic or energy benefit for the whole district. The proposed model is applied to a case study of a district with 40 prosumers and results are critically analyzed.

Keywords energy communities, energy district, smart energy system, MILP