A Framework to Integrate Flexibility Bids into Energy Communities to Improve Self-Consumption

Hastened by the emergence of new technologies, a revolution of the electricity retailing business has put forward new ways of electricity trading. One such new concept is the renewable energy communities (RECs), composed of consumers, prosumers, and generation assets, and managed by an energy community manager. This paper introduces a framework in which demand response in the form of flexibility bids is integrated into RECs to improve their welfare. By using an optimization framework, we have designed a day-ahead activation strategy for such bids where the manager of the REC plans the provisioning of the community in the day-ahead market. Results show that creating a community where flexibility bids are integrated reduces the total system costs by making use of flexibility bids to enhance the matching of supply and demand.