An average consensus approach for the optimal allocation of a shared renewable energy source

This paper investigates the problem of optimally distributing the energy produced by a shared renewable energy source among users, without relying on a centralized decision maker. We assume that each user is only allowed to communicate with his neighbors and buys energy from a producer under non-linear pricing. We formulate a quadratic programming problem aimed at ensuring a social welfare-optimal allocation of the shared resource. We propose a low-complexity distributed algorithm that relies on average consensus. We show the convergence of the proposed algorithm to the unique optimal solution of the resource allocation problem. We also provide numerical simulations demonstrating that the approach allows exploiting the potential of renewable energy sources' sharing to reduce users' energy consumption costs.