A framework for shared EV charging in residential renewable energy communities

Renewable energy communities with members which own electric vehicles (EVs) can benefit financially from the flexibility that EVs provide to distributed energy resources, such as photovoltaic generators. However, in residential environments, this benefit is often lost because during working hours, most EVs are not plugged in at the premises of the community. In this paper, we hypothesize that such communities can regain some of this lost benefit by offering membership to outside EV owners which are interested in charging their vehicles using the community's charging stations during these periods. This paper introduces an optimization model for energy communities consisting of prosumers, electric vehicles, and EV chargers. The model aims to evaluate the potential advantages of integrating external EV owners into an energy community. A hypothetical community representing a multi-apartment building is analyzed, considering scenarios both with and without external members. The analysis focuses on assessing the technical and economic benefits. The findings indicate that the economic benefits for the examined community are relatively small. However, a notable increase in these benefits is observed when the community is incentivized to share energy among members in the form of a flat network charge reduction for shared energy.