Comunidades de energía para una transición energética: una revisión documental de los elementos, retos, y tendencias del autoconsumo comunitario

Abstract

As the energy transition progresses, traditional energy users are empowered by producing, storing, and managing clean energy, generally from non-conventional renewable energy sources. In the Latin American context, experiences of community self-consumption initiatives are very scarce, in addition to the fact that solar home systems are only accessible to some high-income users. Community self-consumption has multiple dimensions making it an integral project; therefore, the development of these models has been complex, without reaching a clear understanding or conceptualization. This article aims to gather several case studies and review the antecedents of solar communities from the first reported initiatives to understand the conflicts and interests developing in distributed community power generation. We conducted the study by identifying the factors for adopting these projects, the financial challenges, and the existing difficulties in establishing energy regulation and policy. With this, it could be concluded that these systems can be applied to both developed and developing countries; however, their objectives, governance models, and structure differ, so there is no universal method for establishing energy communities. Challenges for future research are suggested in the discussion section.