Motivation
In order to promote an increase in the use of renewable energies, the European Union is thinking about promoting decentralized approaches, where the citizens are actively participating in the production and storage of energy. Declining prices for solar panels and the ability to sell and buy electricity among
consumers (it is already possible in some countries like Germany and it is likely to be possible in Switzerland soon) is encouraging the emergence of energy communities. The goal is to model them as a game in order to distribute the electricity produced locally. How the game and the cost functions are defined have a tremendous impact on the efficacy of these communities. There are two main problems that need to be solved. The first one is that the Nash equilibrium of the game should give a satisfactory result for all the agents present in the communities and it should be as fair as possible. The second one is the development of an algorithm that can compute the Nash equilibrium. No model has yet emerged as the best one, due to the complexity of the task and the many limitations, therefore the research is still open.
Outline
In the first step, you will start by familiarizing yourself with the relevant literature on energy communities (see e.g. [1,2]) and tariffs of use (see e.g. [3,4]). Next, the goal is to refine a model already present or come up with a new approach. In both cases, the existence and eventually uniqueness of the Nash
equilibrium has to be investigated. In a second moment, you can focus on the algorithm to compute the Nash equilibrium. The problem has a strong practical use, but most of the work will be theoretical.
Requirements
We seek motivated students with a good mathematical, or computer science background. We do have some concrete ideas on how to tackle the above challenges, but we are always open to different suggestions. If you are interested, please send an email to [email protected] containing
- One paragraph on your background and fit for the project
- Your BS and MS transcripts
This project will be supervised by Prof. Maryam Kamgarpour ([email protected]) and Giulio Salizzoni ([email protected]).
References
- E. M. Gui, I. MacGill ”Typology of future clean energy communities: An exploratory structure, opportunities, and challenges.” Energy Research Social Science (2018)
- I. F.G. Reis et al, ”Business models for energy communities: A review of key issues and trends”, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2021)
- R. M. Johannsen et al., ”Energy communities’ flexibility in different tax and tariff structures”, Energy Conversion and Management (2023)
- A. Tlenshiyeva et al., ”A data-driven methodology to design user-friendly tariffs in energy communities”, Electric Power Systems Research (2024)