Analysis and design of a self-consumption community: a game-theoretic approach

A Self-Consumption (SC) community in which an energy storage (CES) device charged through a solar panel is studied. Each consumer can choose if to connect to the CES device, i.e. to participate the SC community on a given day or not, i.e. to consume solely from the grid. To share the Photo-Voltaic (PV) energy between SC participants, simple allocation rules, e.g. proportionality to consumption needs, are applied. The participation decision affects the costs of the other consumers in two aspects. First, the price of the electricity from the company differs for connected and non-connected consumers. Second, a congestion effect through the price for demand deficit - the demand uncovered by the solar energy from the CES device -between SC participants occurs since this price depends on their aggregate demand deficit. Since the cost of a consumer depends on the decisions of others, a game theoretical approach is used to model this situation; each day is then seen as a game. With numeric simulations, we further consider the sensitivity of the game outcome with respect to the size of the solar panel as well as the allocation mechanism according to which the solar panel generation is distributed among the connected users. Simulations also show how the presence of a solar panel reduces in a 30% the bills of consumers.