Self-Consumption Optimization in an Energy Community

In recent years, a fast penetration of renewable sources in power electrical systems is taking place, providing many benefits; indeed, thanks to the Energy Community development, there is the possibility that renewable energy generated by a user can be shared by the other users of the community too. However, to make this happen, power electronics converters are the main characters of a proper management of shared energy. In this paper authors propose a Simulink scheme of an Energy Community, in which converters and related control systems have been modelled. Through the Maximum Power Point Tracking control of the photovoltaic converter, the maximum photovoltaic power is extracted, and through the double-loop control of the grid-connected inverter, only active power is fed into the grid, generating a current in phase with the grid voltage. The major innovation introduced in this paper is the modelling of a power sharing supervisor system that coordinates all the bidirectional converters which interface batteries to the community, according to their states of charge, in order to set power exchanges with the grid to zero. Results obtained from simulations demonstrate that, by varying load, photovoltaic production and batteries states of charge, the self-consumption optimization aim is pursued.