Individualized Pricing of Energy Storage Sharing Based on Discount Sensitivity

With the increasing use of distributed renewable energy to generate electricity, energy storage sharing has become more promising because it is capable of smoothing renewable power generation and reducing energy purchasing costs. In this article, we present a two-stage pricing mechanism between the coordinator who operates the shared energy storage and the prosumers who are borrowing the shared capacity from the coordinator. Individualized pricing is derived via the two-stage pricing process. It is a pricing strategy that can facilitate the coordinator to capture the most considerable possible net profits through price discrimination. First, prosumers are clustered into different groups using the data-driven approach. Then, novel concepts of bulk capacity borrowing and discount sensitivity are introduced to model the individualized pricing for the first time. As a result, the price structures and the price levels can be jointly optimized. From the simulation results, it can be found that the proposed individualized pricing can increase the net profits of the coordinator, enhance the utilization efficiency of the energy storage system, and reduce the energy consumption costs of the prosumers. © 2005-2012 IEEE.