Citizen Participation in Low-Carbon Energy Systems: Energy Communities and Its Impact on the Electricity Demand on Neighborhood and National Level

Abstract

In this work, the main research question is how a high penetration of energy communities (ECs) affects the national electricity demand in the residential sector. Thus, the existing building stock of three European regions/countries, namely, the Iberian Peninsula, Norway, and Austria, is analyzed and represented by four different model energy communities based on characteristic settlement patterns. A tailor-made, open-source model optimizes the utilization of the local energy technology portfolio, especially small-scale batteries and photovoltaic systems within the ECs. Finally, the results on the national level are achieved by upscaling from the neighborhood level. The findings of different 2030 scenarios (building upon narrative storylines), which consider various socio-economic and techno-economic determinants of possible future energy system development, identify a variety of modification potentials of the electricity demand as a result of EC penetration. The insights achieved in this work highlight the important contributions of ECs to low-carbon energy systems. Future work may focus on the provision of future local energy services, such as increasing cooling demand and/or high shares of electric vehicles, further enhancement of the upscaling to the national level (i.e., considering the distribution network capacities), and further diversification of EC composition beyond the residential sector.

Reliable Data Profiling for Energy Communities – Review of Open-Source Approaches

“…Scenarios were created with the methodology established by [37], which used both a probability-based approach and exploited the results of the Italian national survey and other statistical information on the population. On the contrary, [38] used standard load profiles for annual electricity demand time-series to estimate the effect of high penetration of energy communities in the residential sector, but [39] developed an agent-based simulation model that models every occupant of the household as an independent, desire-driven software agent. Another common approach is using historical data from open-source datasets.…”

Citizen Energy Communities - Insights Into Long-Term Participant Behavior From a Field Study

“…The concept engages in the generation, distribution, supply, consumption of energy. CECs are platforms to actively integrate citizens into the energy system on a local level, empower the energy sector's decarbonization [38], and substantially benefit the local value chain and energy system [39,40]. [40] analyses several European community projects, their goals, and experiences.…”