Community Integrated Energy System Trading: A Comprehensive Review

Focused on life, consumption, and leisure, communities have been regarded as the basic unit of energy use in a city owing to rapid urbanization, whose energy use density continues to increase. Moreover, community integrated energy systems (CIESs) in the rapid development stage have become embedded, small, and self-sufficient energy ecosystems within cities because of their environmental and economic benefits. CIESs face a competitive energy trading environment that comprises numerous entities and complicated relationships. This paper presents an extensive review of various issues related to CIES trading. First, the concepts, types, and resources of CIESs are described. Second, the trading patterns and strategies of CIESs are reviewed from the four perspectives of the trading objects: community-to-peer (C2P), peer-to-peer (P2P), community-to-community (C2C), and community-to-grid (C2G). Third, a tri-layer trading framework and the features of CIESs that participate in combined multienergy markets are proposed. Last, the key issues in CIES trading are summarized.