Demand-Side Management with Local Energy Sharing Model for Prosumer Communities

Recently, the integration of distributed energy resources and renewable energy at the consumer premises is increasing and transforming consumers into prosumers, who not only consume but also produce energy. However, most of the existing demand-side management programs have been focusing only on consumers and their interaction with the utility grid. In this paper, we integrate concepts of local energy sharing among prosumers into the demand-side management program. We propose that the energy price of the utility grid is determined based on the aggregate demand of the community. Inside the community, local energy sharing mechanism is managed by a community energy coordinator and local energy prices are determined based on local demand and supply as well as the grid prices. The prosumers are able to share and schedule their energy consumption based on the price information to minimize their energy bills while the utility grid achieves flatter community aggregate demand. A distributed iterative algorithm is also proposed to solve the consumption scheduling of each prosumer while maintaining user privacy. The simulation results confirm that the proposed model effectively reduces both community energy consumption from the grid and all prosumer energy bills, compared to traditional demand-side management programs without local energy sharing.