CARAVELS: A Case Study Using Peer-to-Peer Transaction, Voluntary Demand Response, and Energy Storage Optimization

With the appearance of energy communities and the proposal of novel energy management models for these communities, it is imperative the proposal of novel deployment infrastructures that could accommodate the needs of energy communities. The deployment of models in pilot sites and energy communities is needed to enable the correct testing and validation of models. Therefore, this work presents a distributed energy community infrastructure based on software containers, known as CARAVELS. The system is designed to support energy communities by enabling the deployment, testing, and validation of novel energy management models. The platform was tested in a virtual energy community consisting of 7 real buildings/members and 20 simulated buildings/members, demonstrating its capability to deploy and run energy models in real-world settings. The results suggest that CARAVELS is effective for managing energy in energy communities.