Price-based centralized coordination of grid-edge resources for residential community energy flexibility assessment

The growing use of distributed energy resources and flexible loads has transformed residential communities into active participants in distribution system operations. This shift creates opportunities for demand-side flexibility while introducing new operational challenges. This paper presents a price-based, centralized coordination framework to quantify and schedule community energy flexibility from grid-edge resources, including HVAC systems, electric vehicles (EVs), photovoltaic (PV) systems, and battery energy storage systems (BESSs). The framework incorporates customer comfort constraints, fairness considerations for shared EV charging, distribution network operating limits, and battery degradation costs to achieve economically efficient and technically feasible operation under time-of-use and dynamic electricity pricing. The framework is validated on a modified IEEE 123-bus distribution system using retail electricity prices from the Salt River Project (SRP) and Commonwealth Edison (ComEd). Sensitivity analyses assess the impact of battery degradation costs and operational uncertainties, including variations in PV generation and initial EV state-of-charge. A scalability analysis further examines computational performance as the number of participating households increases. Results show that coordinated PV and BESS operation improves flexibility by enabling the temporal shifting of renewable generation. However, fairness constraints and EV charging penalties can reduce available flexibility, while higher battery degradation costs discourage frequent battery cycling and reduce flexibility value. Overall, coordinated scheduling reduces community operating costs and maintains distribution system operating limits when network constraints are considered. These findings underscore the importance of coordinated grid-edge resource management and appropriate pricing strategies for secure and cost-effective residential energy flexibility.