Energy communities enable members to create jointly value by investing in and operating distributed energy resources (DERs), including generation and storage. In this paper, we develop value allocation and stabilization algorithms for energy communities based on cooperative game theory. The method considers realistic relationships between the consumers of energy within an energy community and potential outside investors, who can form coalitions, while accounting for investment and operation of DERs. We apply the model to a numerical example using data from the Austrian electricity market. The results show how the created value from DERs could be shared between the members of the energy community. Moreover, limited area for solar photovoltaic (PV) installations may destabilize the energy community by removing incentives to participate. Still, the introduction of capacity based payments or the expansion of the limited PV resources show an stabilization effect of the energy community.

Electric vehicles represent a necessary alternative for wheeled transportation to meet the global and national targets specified in the Paris Agreement of 2016. However, the high concentration of electric vehicles exposes their harmful effects on the power grid. This reflects negatively on electricity market prices, making the charging of electric vehicles less cost-effective. This study investigates the economic potential of different charging strategies for an existing office site in Austria with multiple charging infrastructures. For this purpose, a proper mathematical representation of the investigated case study is needed in order to define multiple optimization problems that are able to determine the financial potential of different charging strategies. This paper presents a method to implement electric vehicles and stationary battery storage in optimization problems with the exclusive use of linear relationships and applies it to a real-life use case with measured data to prove its effectiveness. Multiple aspects of four charging strategies are investigated, and sensitivity analyses are performed. The results show that the management of the electric vehicles charging processes leads to overall costs reduction of more than 30% and an increase in specific power-related grid prices makes the charging processes management more convenient.