A framework for energy communities management: smart electric vehicle charging stations

Abstract

Energy distribution flow through the general grid has traditionally been hierarchical and unidirectional from generation agents to customers. However, contemporary changes in the conception of energy uses have led to the creation of self-established smart energy communities, where members actively participate in a federation that allows them to generate, buy, store, consume, supply and trade their own energy autonomously. This novel paradigm presents several challenges that can be modelled and solved by making use of multiple computing and informatics domains, for instance, to forecast day-ahead energy needs, to optimally plan energy usage and trading, or to register energy transactions among members securely and transparently. With the goals of moving towards a democratized self-governance model, decarbonizing the economy, and accelerating the energy transition at the user level, a new comprehensive architecture is devised as a multi-level framework that integrates optimization models, machine learning tools and smart grid resources for managing communities constituted by electric vehicle smart charging stations. This framework is implemented and thoroughly evaluated.