Energy Community Ex-Post Electricity Allocation Algorithm based on Participants' Preferences

With the first European Union (EU) member states enacting legislation for establishing energy communities (EC) based on the EU guidelines, the distribution system operators (DSOs) might be obliged in many countries to allocate electricity for the ECs based on a predefined distribution key. In Austria, such legislation has already become a reality. From the provided DSO data, it is only known how much electricity a participant purchased from the EC, but it is not known which participant purchased what exact amount of electricity from which peer and vice versa. To address this issue, an ex-post electricity allocation algorithm is developed based on participant preferences. Each participant can indicate a preference from which peer electricity is preferred. Knowing ‘who sold how much to who’ and ‘who purchased how much from who’ – which is the outcome of the ex-post allocation algorithm – enables applying peer-to-peer prices, empowering the ECs to increased individuality. The proposed algorithm is applied to a fictitious model EC of eight participants, four of which are equipped with a rooftop photovoltaic (PV) system. Two scenarios are investigated: one with well-distributed preferences and another with poorly distributed preferences. Based on this, the effects of differently distributed preferences on individual EC participants are assessed and discussed. It can be concluded that ex-post electricity allocation might become a powerful asset for ECs for the achievement of individual goals, despite being constrained by the original electricity allocation by the DSOs with severely limited room for individuality.