Benefits of Virtual Community Energy Storages Compared to Individual Batteries Based on Behaviour Based Synthetic Load Profiles

Abstract

This paper focuses on a low-voltage grid area consisting of 500 distributed households with both photovoltaics and a battery. If every household focuses only on its self-consumption, the batteries run inefficiently and the grid is stressed unnecessarily. Thus, the batteries within the considered area are connected to form a virtual community energy storage. To simulate such an environment, individual and realistic load profiles for each household are needed. This paper presents a novel, behavior based load profile generator to get such profiles. It is shown that these profiles aggregate to the German standardized load profile H0. An already existing simulation model of decentralized households is adapted in order to include community controllers, which aggregate and distribute the corresponding power flows in order to run the batteries efficiently and avoid unnecessary power flows. The whole low-voltage grid area is simulated for various community sizes within the area. Utilizing community power leads to a better overall efficiency, a decrease in the workload of the grid and a higher self-sufficiency within the considered area. These benefits can already be achieved at small community sizes.