An Integrated Model for Economic Effectiveness and Self-Sufficiency Improvement Based on the Sharing Economy Principle in Energy Communities

The concept of energy communities emerges as an innovative and promising solution to address the technical, economic, environmental, and social challenges facing modern energy systems. By enabling prosumers to share assets, energy communities reduce investment costs and leverage economies of scale, thereby enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of energy systems. This paper presents an optimization model designed to balance economic efficiency and self-sufficiency within an energy community framework. Leveraging the sharing economy concept, the model manages various Distributed Energy Resources (DERs)-including electrical storage, Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems, and thermal storage-as shared assets through an Energy Community Manager (ECM). Each prosumer is equipped with a photovoltaic system, an Electric Vehicle (EV), and other household appliances. The Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem is applied to a one-year dataset and solved using the CPLEX solver within the GAMS environment. The results reveal key trade-offs between economic efficiency and energy self-sufficiency: operational costs are up to 31.3<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">%</sup> lower in Summer compared to Winter, and self-sufficiency ratios can be up to 17.8% higher in Spring compared to Winter. These insights are crucial for informed energy-planning decisions within energy communities.