Hierarchical cooperative pricing and revenue settlement method for multi-microgrid cluster energy sharing

A two-stage closed-loop method is proposed for cooperative dispatch and secondary benefit allocation in renewable-integrated multi-microgrid clusters. The conflict among mutual-aid scheduling, privacy preservation, and benefit acceptability to participants is addressed. In Stage I, the total operating cost is minimized under electricity-heat coupling, energy storage, and demand response constraints, and the power exchanges among microgrids are determined. In Stage II, the islanded optimal cost is adopted as the bargaining breakdown point. Hourly settlement is performed first, followed by end-of-day secondary allocation, while individual rationality and budget balance are satisfied to establish an auditable and payable settlement closed loop. A hierarchical distributed solution framework is developed based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), in which only boundary power and price signals are exchanged. Case studies are conducted under the base case and renewable generation perturbation scenarios, and stable convergence is achieved in all scenarios. After settlement, the total system cost is reduced by 19.41% compared with the islanded baseline. The net cost of each microgrid is kept no higher than its breakdown point, and the numerical budget reconciliation error is maintained on the order of 10⁻⁵. The feasibility and robustness of the proposed method are validated.