Access Economy for Storage in Energy Communities

We address the market design issue for a local energy community, comprising prosumers, consumers, photovoltaic, and energy storage systems, all connected as a community to a distribution grid. Our work explores different market design options based on cooperative and non-cooperative game-theoretic models that enable an economic access to the benefits of energy storage for prosumers without a direct ownership of a storage system. We compare market outcomes in terms of the community cost as well as the individual cost. We pay special attention to potential uncertainties, and investigate financial instruments that allow storage systems to be utilized by multiple prosumers. In particular, we explore a case where a prosumer that owns a storage system provides rights, either physical or financial, rather than participating in the local market as an arbitrageur. Moreover, we consider a cooperative market design where energy community members agree on the Shapley value or the nucleolus as a community cost allocation rule. Our results show that an access economy for energy storage systems enhances energy communities by reducing the cost volatility for most prosumers, while the expected operational cost of the community as a whole remains unchanged.