Preference-aware flexibility envelopes for coordinated operation of energy communities

The increasing integration of energy communities into distribution networks provides significant distributed flexibility potential but also introduces important operational coordination challenges due to the heterogeneous objectives and internal preferences of participating communities. In this context, distribution-system operation based on flexibility envelopes enables scalable coordination by exchanging aggregated flexibility information instead of detailed internal operational variables. However, conventional aggregation approaches typically prioritize technical feasibility, potentially exposing flexibility trajectories whose associated operating costs deviate significantly from the baseline self-interested operation of the participating communities. To address this limitation, the proposed methodology constructs preference-aware admissible operating regions based on bounded deviations from the baseline self-interested operation of each community. The resulting flexibility envelopes therefore preserve realizability while explicitly controlling the degradation of local operational preferences. The proposed framework combines community-level operational optimization, preference-aware flexibility-envelope construction, and distribution-level coordination without requiring the distribution system operator to access detailed internal community variables. The methodology is validated using the IEEE 33-bus distribution feeder comprising energy communities with flexible demand, battery energy storage systems, and photovoltaic generation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly improves system-level coordination while preserving non-intrusive community autonomy. Compared with conventional inner-envelope formulations, the proposed approach achieves substantially lower preference degradation while maintaining most of the achievable flexibility benefits. In addition, the framework preserves full realizability of the coordinated operating points and remains close to the performance of the centralized coordination benchmark. Overall, the proposed methodology provides a practical compromise between centralized coordination efficiency and community-oriented hierarchical and non-intrusive operation, supporting scalable flexibility coordination in distribution systems.