Energy communities typologies and performances: Impact of members configurations, system size and management

Abstract

Energy communities have gained significant interest in recent years as they enable active citizen participation in the energy transition. Most research in energy communities delves into strategies for enhancing sustainability, economic viability, and fairness. However, these strategies’ effectiveness largely depends on each energy community’s specific characteristics, including members types and available assets. This study focuses on understanding the impact of input parameters across different energy community typologies. It examines community size, the percentage of prosumers, and the diversity of members’ power profiles, analyzing 24,000 distinct configurations derived from an initial dataset of 92 load profiles. The study evaluates multiple setups for individual choices of solar photovoltaic systems and energy storage assets. The assessment applies a collective optimal management strategy to compare self-consumption and potential energy bill savings against a baseline where end-users operate individually. The same management strategy is applied consistently across various energy community typologies to demonstrate that the outcomes are primarily determined by the diversity of inputs (i.e., the energy community’s specific characteristics) rather than the energy management approach itself. The results indicate that energy communities with more than 20 members do not experience significant performance enhancements, regardless of operational choices. Additionally, the findings highlight that diversifying member types is more beneficial than oversizing the generation and storage asset capacity. Ultimately, the results exhibit that energy communities with a percentage of only consumers yield favorable outcomes for all members. Optimal configurations are identified when the composition comprises 75% of prosumers with heterogeneous load profiles.