An integrated three-stage framework for the formation and operation of citizen energy sub-communities based on prosumer attitudes

Similar attitudes of prosumers in energy sharing within the Citizen Energy Community play an important role in sustainable energy development. To address the citizen energy community’s sustainable development challenges, a three-stage framework for the sake of optimal formation and operation in the energy sub-communities is proposed. In the first stage, the formation of sub-communities is addressed using various unsupervised machine-learning approaches based on the prosumers' attitudes. The Davies-Bouldin index is utilized to measure the similarity level among individuals within a cluster. In the second stage, sub-communities are optimally operated while the impacts of community energy storage and personal energy storage on the citizen energy community’s operation costs are evaluated. The results indicate that incorporating community energy storage in citizen energy community’s outcome a 25 % reduction in the energy storage investment costs and a significant decrease of 40.24 % in operation costs. In the final stage, the optimal number of energy sub-communities is determined based on the obtained results in the first and second stages using a multi-criteria decision-making approach. This paper provides valuable insights into the formation and operation of energy sub-communities, offering a comprehensive framework that balances sustainability objectives associated with economic considerations.