Reinforcement Learning and Rule-Based Peer-to-Peer Pricing in Residential PV-BES Communities

A new arXiv paper (2609.01680v1) comparing rule-based and reinforcement-learning (RL) pricing for peer-to-peer electricity trading in residential photovoltaic communities finds that rule-based benchmarks outperform the best RL policy in the base PV-only configuration, while adding battery storage boosts community savings under the best RL policy from EUR 734.23 to EUR 978.52. The study, which uses a Deep Q-Network and evaluates multiplier-based and learnable supply-demand-ratio (SDR) shaped pricing, concludes that rule-based pricing remains highly competitive and that storage significantly improves learning-based outcomes, though benefit distribution remains heterogeneous across households.

arXiv:2609.01680v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper compares rule-based and learning-based pricing mechanisms for peer-to-peer P2P electricity trading in residential photovoltaic communities. The rule-based benchmarks comprise bill-sharing as an ex post allocation mechanism, the mid-market rate, and supply-demand-ratio pricing. The reinforcement-learning RL formulation is implemented through a Deep Q-Network and evaluated under multiplier-based and learnable SDR-shaped pricing, with a fixed-parameter SDR variant as a non-learning control. Performance is assessed through community savings together with complementary financial and operational indicators. In the base PV-only configuration, the rule-based benchmarks outperform the best RL policy. With battery energy storage, evaluated for the RL policies only, community savings under the best RL policy increase from EUR 734.23 to EUR 978.52. Across the learning-based modes and in both configurations, SDR-shaped pricing outperforms the multiplier-based parameterization considered. The results indicate that rule-based pricing remains highly competitive wherever the two families are compared directly, and that storage substantially improves the learning-based outcomes under this accounting, while the distribution of benefits remains heterogeneous across households.