A MILP Approach for Demand Management in Renewable Energy Communities with Residential End-Users

Nowadays, the energy sharing of RES production within Renewable Energy Communities (REC) is promoting the diffusion of a more decentralized energy system, where dispersed renewable generation can be locally self-consumed by REC members. The maximization of self-consumption through the matching between generation and demand is thus fundamental to ensure higher economic and environmental benefits for residential end-users joining REC configurations. However residential electricity demand and the corresponding load profiles are generally influenced by end-users’ behaviour. In fact, even if most of the household appliances can be assumed as fixed loads, the usage of some appliances depends basically on the residents’ habits. The engagement of customers in changing their energy consumption patterns is then challenging to promote flexibility in electricity demand to further increase the benefits of adopting and joining renewable energy communities. In this view, a MILP approach is proposed to model end-users’ flexibility for investigating how the changing in consumption habits can potentially improve the energy sharing by maximizing the match between RES production and demand. User’s discomfort is evaluated consequently as the distance between the desired or usual consumption pattern and the optimized one. An Italian multifamily residential building case study, where end-users adopt a collective self-consumption scheme, is considered to highlight energy and economic results assuming different level of end-users’ flexibility. Finally, a comparison between the maximization of energy sharing and the minimization of discomfort rate is pointed out through weighted sum method to identify solutions with different relevance of the end-users’ flexibility.