Cost and benefit allocation in a energy community

In the transition to a sustainable energy system, energy communities have unique advantages; they require no additional land and allow inhabitants to reduce their energy bills. Nowadays, each shareholder’s profit is calculated based on their share of investment in the technology and the total PV output of the installation. However, this approach does not guarantee an equitable sharing of benefits and may compromise the proper functioning of these communities. This report examines how to share the cost/benefit of an energy community among shareholders, taking into account real-time consumption and photovoltaic production. Furthermore, the investment share of each member ranges from zero to the total cost of the technology. To this end, a new billing method is defined, characterized by a community electricity tariff calculated for each member at each time step. The results show that the main beneficiaries of this method of billing are the inhabitants who have a high degree of self-consumption.