Empowering energy management in smart buildings: A comprehensive study on distributed energy storage systems for Sustainable consumption

The increment of photovoltaic generation in smart buildings and energy communities makes the use of energy storage systems desired to increase the self-consumption efficiency. This paper proposes and explores a model for energy storage systems management that considers local renewable generation, local demand, and retailer energy prices. The proposed model was tested at both energy community-level and the smart building level, demonstrating their capabilities of deployment. To validate the proposed model, a case study with two scenarios, including a 251 members energy community, was executed. The results demonstrate significant cost reductions for community members when adopting energy storage systems and the proposed management model. Regarding the smart building application four scenarios were tested, it is demonstrated that the demand for energy from the retailer could be set to zero during periods of time to enable its participation in demand response events. Overall, this paper contributes to the state-of-the-art by identifying and evaluating a model that manages the energy storage systems charge and discharge operation to actively reduce energy costs at the community-level (19.26%) and building level (11.75%) and to demonstrate that part of the loads can be optimized to understand if the building can be energy net-zero.