A Transactive Energy Community with Battery Storage in a Maritime Port: A Real-World Case Study

Community energy management is a key enabler for integrating on-site renewable generation, coordinating demand, and decarbonizing energy systems at the community level. While most studies focus on residential and commercial energy communities, maritime ports remain largely underexplored despite their high energy demand and ongoing electrification. This paper proposes a transactive energy community framework for maritime ports that integrates a pool-based local electricity market with battery energy storage. The market operates as a double-sided auction with a uniform clearing price, while battery storage follows a dispatch strategy that prioritizes self-consumption and exploits the remaining capacity for energy arbitrage. Market clearing and storage scheduling are coordinated through an iterative process that progressively adapts battery operation according to market outcomes. The framework is demonstrated using measured electricity demand, simulated photovoltaic generation, and measurement-based wind generation profiles from the Port of Sines, one of Europe’s largest deep-water ports. It achieves 17.1 MWh of internal energy trading, covering 80.4% of the daily community demand through local generation and storage. Compared with full grid supply, consumer electricity costs are reduced by an average of 38.9%, while battery storage provides an additional 13% of savings beyond those achieved by the market alone. Furthermore, renewable self-consumption increases by 57.2% when storage is active. The results demonstrate that coordinated market and storage operation can increase renewable energy utilization, reduce electricity costs, and enhance the value of shared flexibility resources in maritime energy communities. Compared with a centralized MILP benchmark, the proposed framework clears 64.5% of the MILP volume with only 31.6% of its battery throughput, and achieves a 42.4% higher net benefit per MWh after accounting for battery degradation.