Integration of renewable energy sources, active role of consumers and energy management systems are currently among research priorities in energy systems. This paper proposes an innovative coordinated energy scheduling for a microgrid of neighbor prosumers with different consumption patterns. All prosumers have photovoltaic generation systems, Li-ion batteries as energy storage systems and regular household loads. A genetic algorithm is used to schedule each prosumer's battery charge/discharge, with the aim of reducing energy exchange losses by minimizing the power in the point of interconnection of the microgrid with the main grid, with several advantages compared to classical optimization objectives, and without worsening battery lifespan degradation. Individual and coordinated strategies are compared and self-consumption and self-sufficiency of the prosumers' set are evaluated with the aim of showing the advantage of coordination. The paper concludes that coordinated operation can contribute to improve the exploitation of energy resources in the prosumer microgrid, reducing the amount of energy interchanged with the distribution grid by approximately 13%, and, at the same time, avoiding increasing the battery cycling and consequent degradation.

Due to the introduction of distributed renewable energy technologies with variable resource availability, the need of flexible electrical systems is evident. In general, flexibility is achieved from the supply side and often using carbon intensive energy generators. Therefore, improving the flexibility of the electrical system by taking advantage of renewable energy generation capacities and demand response measures in buildings is of major importance for a sustainable development. Control systems to implement these demand response measures need to quantify the flexibility of the respective buildings. Having this into consideration, this paper aims at presenting a literature review on methodologies to quantify the energy flexibility of buildings