Decentralized Incentive-based multi-energy trading mechanism for CCHP-based MG cluster

•A multi-energy trading model for combined cooling, heating and power microgrid cluster is established.•The uncertainties of wind power and photovoltaic power are considered.•A decentralized method is proposed using the alternating direction method of multipliers decomposition technique.•A benefit allocation mechanism and a payment chain are designed. Due to high fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP)-based microgrids (MGs) become much more popular. To reduce the total operating costs of CCHP-based MG cluster, an incentive-based multi-energy trading mechanism is proposed to facilitate multi-energy trading among independent CCHP-based MG operators (CMGOs). Motivated by the mechanism, multi-energy trading is carried out among a number of neighboring CMGOs. In practice, CMGOs may belong to different economic entities. Besides, there is usually no coordination center. Therefore, a fully decentralized distributed solution based on the alternating direction method of multipliers decomposition technique is proposed. Especially, to achieve fair benefit allocation, a novel index termed as contribution rate is first proposed to identify CMGO’s contributions to multi-energy trading. Then, asymmetric Nash bargaining theory is used to determine the benefits obtained by each CMGO. Besides, a payment chain is designed to implement the benefit allocation mechanism proposed in this paper. Each CMGO gets the corresponding benefits according to their contribution rates. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.