Game Theory approaches for Renewable Energy Communities: a critical comparison

The energy community in the European regulatory framework is defined as a legal entity that empowers “citizens, small businesses and local authorities to produce, manage and consume their own energy”. It aims to reach social, economic and environmental benefits for its members and the way to implement it sets a number of features that turn the energy community either in a cooperative or non-cooperative model. A representative state of the art is proposed in this paper about game theory for energy communities modeling and management. The literature is broadly divided into two main groups. One considering the energy community as an entity to be modeled through a cooperative game, the other, as a non-cooperative game. However, when the aim is collective self consumption, such as the Italian legislation presumes, both cited models do not fit, as free-riding behaviour is not captured. The paper explores the Public Goods Game modeling as a viable alternative to represent end users behaviours and proposes a formulation that can address or model end-users strategic choices. The paper is organized as follows. First, a state of the art on the topic is proposed, then a rational classification of different formulations of the problem is provided, the latter depending on the goal of the energy community and its management. Finally a research gap and a possible development are identified for further research on the topic.