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Decentralized Equitable Energy Access in Energy Communities

Siying Li, Timothy Douglas Mount, Lang Tong

Abstract

We address the issue of equitable energy access within an energy community consisting of members with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, including varying income levels and differing capacities to access distributed energy resources such as solar power and storage systems. While optimal energy consumption scheduling is well-studied, integrating equity into decentralized real-time energy access remains under-explored. This paper formulates Equity-regarding Welfare Maximization (EqWM)--a welfare optimization energy scheduling subject to equity constraints. We further develop a decentralized implementation (D-EqWM) as a bi-level optimization, where a non-profit operator designs a community pricing policy aimed at maximizing overall welfare, subject to constraints that ensure equitable access. Community members, in turn, optimize their individual consumption based on these prices. We present the optimal pricing policy along with its key properties.

Decentralized Equitable Energy Access in Energy Communities

Abstract

We address the issue of equitable energy access within an energy community consisting of members with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, including varying income levels and differing capacities to access distributed energy resources such as solar power and storage systems. While optimal energy consumption scheduling is well-studied, integrating equity into decentralized real-time energy access remains under-explored. This paper formulates Equity-regarding Welfare Maximization (EqWM)--a welfare optimization energy scheduling subject to equity constraints. We further develop a decentralized implementation (D-EqWM) as a bi-level optimization, where a non-profit operator designs a community pricing policy aimed at maximizing overall welfare, subject to constraints that ensure equitable access. Community members, in turn, optimize their individual consumption based on these prices. We present the optimal pricing policy along with its key properties.
Paper Structure (12 sections, 10 equations, 4 figures)

This paper contains 12 sections, 10 equations, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Equity Measure for Energy Access
  3. Equity-regarding Welfare Maximization
  4. EqWM: Centralized Implementation
  5. D-EqWM: A Decentralized Implementation
  6. Member consumption policy $\chi_i$
  7. Community pricing policy $\psi$
  8. Optimal Pricing Policy and Properties
  9. Optimal D-EqWM Policy
  10. Properties of D-EqWM
  11. A Numerical Example
  12. Conclusions

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Optimal volumetric price $\theta_0^*$ under D-EqWM.
  • Figure 2: Pareto front of the efficiency-equity tradeoff for D-EqWM.
  • Figure 3: Distributions of expected energy consumption under different pricing policies and their corresponding Lorenz curves. (Top left: expected energy consumption distribution for households outside the EC under NEM tariff; top right: expected energy consumption distribution for households inside the EC under NEM tariff; bottom left: expected energy consumption distribution for households inside the EC under D-EqWM; bottom right: Lorenz curves of energy budget and consumption distributions).
  • Figure 4: Improvement in expected individual surplus under D-EqWM.