Optimal Charging of Electric Vehicles in Incentive-Based Energy Communities

Renewable energy communities are expected to play a fundamental role in the green energy transition. In this study, an optimization framework for the optimal operation of energy communities under high penetration of electric vehicles is proposed. Specifically, we consider an energy community composed of different entities featuring loads, renewable generators, energy storage systems, and electric vehicle charging stations. The main goal is to coordinate vehicle charging and storage operation so as to minimize the overall community costs. In particular, an incentive-based remuneration scheme is considered, promoting community self-consumption. The final optimization problem is cast as a linear program, thus able to deal with a large number of entities and vehicles. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed procedure in terms of cost reduction and community self-consumption.