Explicit solution to optimal management of storage systems in renewable energy communities

Renewable energy communities constitute one of the most promising tools to contribute to the green energy transition and to provide social, environmental, and economic benefits to their members. These goals are pursued through the cooperative efforts of the community participants to increase the local energy self-consumption. In this paper, the optimal operation of energy storage system in an incentive-based energy community is addressed. By exploiting the flexibility provided by the storage facilities, the problem of minimizing the community energy bill by taking advantage of incentives related to local self-consumption is formulated. Conditions for the convenience of using storage systems inside an energy community, and explicit optimal solutions for managing such systems are analytically derived. Robustness of the solution against uncertainty affecting consumption and generation profiles of the community members is investigated. Numerical simulations are provided to assess the performance and the feasibility of the proposed solution.