The concept of a virtual energy storage system (VESS) is based on the sharing of a large energy storage system by multiple units; however, the capacity allocation for each unit limits the operation performance of the VESS. This study proposes an operation strategy of a dynamic VESS for smart energy communities. The proposed VESS operation strategy considers the usage-limited constraint rather than the capacity allocation constraint and it guarantees the usage of VESS resources of each participant for an operation period. Therefore, the degrees of freedom for VESS operation can be increased at each operation time. The dynamic VESS operation problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear problem that could be solved optimally by applying gradient methods and dual decomposition. The dataset of a VESS in Korea is used for simulation. The simulation results demonstrate that, when the proposed operation strategy is used, the cost efficiency achieved is more than twice that achieved when the existing VESS operation strategy is used. Furthermore, the proposed strategy accurately reflects the characteristics of the participants; thus, more units can participate in the VESS operation service. The proposed VESS operation can improve the system performance of the utility grid and increase the net benefit of the participants.