Volume 53

Behavioral Observations of Decision-Making in Energy Sharing Communities From Serious Game Approach Tomohiro Akutsu, Yoshiki Yamagata

Abstract

In the context of decarbonization against climate change, energy management measures including Distributed Energy Resource (DER) is gaining significant social attention. The Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan, advocates for regional decarbonization and promotes community-wide efforts to increase renewable energy usage. Recent advancement of technologies such as smart metering and blockchain make the implementation of the Peer-to-Peer(P2P) energy trading system, that enables individual buildings to buy and sell energy generated by renewable sources like photovoltaic (PV) and stored in batteries, much easier. Against these backdrops, we expect that energy sharing communities which share the benefits of renewable energy and decarbonization measures will be formed to in the future society. The existing researches which are focusing on the energy trading or energy sharing system mainly aim to evaluate economic benefit for communities through simulation regarding participants in the trading market as agents. However, we point out little consideration has been given whether the results calculated by simulation are truly aligning with participant’s behavior and benefit that participants expect in the real world. While simulations can estimate economic benefit, it is crucial to observe actual participant behavior to ensure these results are consistent with the reality. This study will examine how participants behave in the community which shares the benefit from energy management measures through observation of playing the energy sharing game. The results showed that shared funds were distributed equally to players, but players tended to perceive the distribution was equitable. Our findings will be helpful for considering how the energy sharing community will be designed, and how prosumers/consumers behave in a society where the energy sharing is implemented.

Keywords serious game, peer-to-peer energy trading, renewable energy, decision making, distributed energy system, smart grid