Energy sharing through shared storage in net zero energy communities

Abstract

Growth in the adoption of distributed energy resources is shaping a new energy ecosystem posing a perceptible threat to the grid by relying on it as a virtually inexpensive storage mechanism. This growth is compounded by new policy objectives that require pursuing net zero energy (NZE) goals for new buildings. One emerging framework that attempts to remediate this problem is energy sharing in a community microgrid. In this framework, through complementary demand profiles and shared energy storage, buildings use energy resources more efficiently with the objective of reducing grid interactions. In this paper, we create a year-long discrete-time simulation model of 40 residential and non-residential buildings to measure the reduction in grid interactions through energy sharing and shared storage for the case of a NZE community. Our results show that, when sharing is enabled, a 9.5% reduction in grid interactions can be obtained with buildings that have energy storage. Additionally, a month-by-month exploration revealed that annual patterns in generation drastically impact the benefits from sharing energy. The reduction in grid utilization ranged from 20% during periods of high energy surplus (i.e. summer) to 5% during low energy generation (i.e. winter).