Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast Uncertainty

Energy communities (ECs) are an increasingly studied path toward improving prosumer coordination. A central challenge of ECs is to allocate cost savings fairly to members. While many allocation mechanisms have been developed, existing literature does not account for the implications of inaccurate fo...

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Main Authors: Michael Eichelbeck, Matthias Althoff
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10807294/
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author Michael Eichelbeck
Matthias Althoff
author_facet Michael Eichelbeck
Matthias Althoff
author_sort Michael Eichelbeck
collection DOAJ
description Energy communities (ECs) are an increasingly studied path toward improving prosumer coordination. A central challenge of ECs is to allocate cost savings fairly to members. While many allocation mechanisms have been developed, existing literature does not account for the implications of inaccurate forecasts on the fairness of the allocation. We introduce a set of fairness conditions for imperfect knowledge allocation and show that these conditions constitute a Pareto front. We demonstrate how a well-established allocation scheme, the Shapley value mechanism (SVM), has unfavorable consequences for flexibility-providing community members and generally does not yield solutions on this Pareto front. In contrast, we interpret dispatch cost under imperfect knowledge as being composed of two components. The first represents the cost under perfect knowledge, and the second represents the cost arising from inaccurate forecasts. Our proposed mechanism extends an SVM-based allocation of the perfect knowledge cost by allocating the remaining cost in a way that guarantees finding solutions on the Pareto front. To this end, we formulate a convex multi-objective optimization problem that can efficiently be solved as a linear or quadratic program.
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spelling doaj-art-4747a1f75521477bb81018ca23230e482025-01-28T00:02:15ZengIEEEIEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy2687-79102025-01-011221110.1109/OAJPE.2024.352041810807294Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast UncertaintyMichael Eichelbeck0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1522-8767Matthias Althoff1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3733-842XDepartment of Computer Engineering, Technical University of Munich, Garching, GermanyDepartment of Computer Engineering, Technical University of Munich, Garching, GermanyEnergy communities (ECs) are an increasingly studied path toward improving prosumer coordination. A central challenge of ECs is to allocate cost savings fairly to members. While many allocation mechanisms have been developed, existing literature does not account for the implications of inaccurate forecasts on the fairness of the allocation. We introduce a set of fairness conditions for imperfect knowledge allocation and show that these conditions constitute a Pareto front. We demonstrate how a well-established allocation scheme, the Shapley value mechanism (SVM), has unfavorable consequences for flexibility-providing community members and generally does not yield solutions on this Pareto front. In contrast, we interpret dispatch cost under imperfect knowledge as being composed of two components. The first represents the cost under perfect knowledge, and the second represents the cost arising from inaccurate forecasts. Our proposed mechanism extends an SVM-based allocation of the perfect knowledge cost by allocating the remaining cost in a way that guarantees finding solutions on the Pareto front. To this end, we formulate a convex multi-objective optimization problem that can efficiently be solved as a linear or quadratic program.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10807294/Energy communitycost allocationfairnessforecast uncertaintyShapley valuePareto optimality
spellingShingle Michael Eichelbeck
Matthias Althoff
Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast Uncertainty
IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy
Energy community
cost allocation
fairness
forecast uncertainty
Shapley value
Pareto optimality
title Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast Uncertainty
title_full Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast Uncertainty
title_fullStr Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast Uncertainty
title_full_unstemmed Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast Uncertainty
title_short Fair Cost Allocation in Energy Communities Under Forecast Uncertainty
title_sort fair cost allocation in energy communities under forecast uncertainty
topic Energy community
cost allocation
fairness
forecast uncertainty
Shapley value
Pareto optimality
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10807294/
work_keys_str_mv AT michaeleichelbeck faircostallocationinenergycommunitiesunderforecastuncertainty
AT matthiasalthoff faircostallocationinenergycommunitiesunderforecastuncertainty