A Shareholding-Based Resource Sharing Mechanism for Promoting Energy Equity in Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading

As an innovative paradigm for power systems with a high penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs), peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading enables direct energy exchange among end-users, which can reduce energy costs and facilitate energy balance. Energy equity issues among low-income citizens however hinder the wide adoption of these schemes, due to investment requirements and inefficient management schemes of DERs. This paper proposes a shareholding-based resource sharing mechanism through which a citizen becomes a group prosumer by sharing the usufruction of DERs, which ensures the efficient use of the shared resources. As the proposed sharing mechanism links all the energy and economic benefits with shares, a decision-making and shareholding transfer model is designed to determine the on-demand allocation of shares. The energy generated by the shared DERs can be self-consumed or shared via P2P energy trading or via the local microgrid market. To devise generation and consumption strategies, two models based on the supply-response and demand-response characteristics of the prosumer are proposed. Finally, simulation studies based on the IEEE 33-bus system demonstrate that the proposed mechanism increases the overall average individual energy utilization and market efficiency by approximately 20% and 35%, respectively, and greatly improves energy equity.