  This work fits in the context of community microgrids, where members of a
community can exchange energy and services among themselves, without going
through the usual channels of the public electricity grid. We introduce and
analyze a framework to operate a community microgrid, and to share the
resulting revenues and costs among its members. A market-oriented pricing of
energy exchanges within the community is obtained by implementing an internal
local market based on the marginal pricing scheme. The market aims at
maximizing the social welfare of the community, thanks to the more efficient
allocation of resources, the reduction of the peak power to be paid, and the
increased amount of reserve, achieved at an aggregate level. A community
microgrid operator, acting as a benevolent planner, redistributes revenues and
costs among the members, in such a way that the solution achieved by each
member within the community is not worse than the solution it would achieve by
acting individually. In this way, each member is incentivized to participate in
the community on a voluntary basis. The overall framework is formulated in the
form of a bilevel model, where the lower level problem clears the market, while
the upper level problem plays the role of the community microgrid operator.
Numerical results obtained on a real test case implemented in Belgium show
around 54% cost savings on a yearly scale for the community, as compared to the
case when its members act individually.
