Threshold Pricing for Distributed Scheduling of Flexible Demands in Energy Communities

Abstract

This paper develops a price-based distributed scheduling in an energy community whose members own behind-the-meter renewable generation with deferrable EV charging and price-elastic thermostatic loads. A coordinator transacts with the distribution utility under a Net Energy Metering tariff and broadcasts a community price to which each household responds in its own interest, giving a bilevel stochastic dynamic program that is intractable in general. Our main result characterizes that the joint optimal centralized policy is a two-threshold policy on the community's aggregate renewable generation. Building on this structure, we adopt the Threshold Pricing Rule, which is uniform, individually rational, revenue adequate, and asymptotically optimal in terms of community welfare under a light-traffic condition. Simulations using synthetic and real world data confirm asymptotic optimality and individual surplus gains.