Methodology for assessing cost of electricity for energy community members

Having achieved a significant share of renewable generation in different sectors of society, forming Energy Communities (EC) is the next step towards energy sustainability. The energy and economic performance of EC depends on several factors. These include electricity tariffs, members’ consumption profiles, available generation/storage, and the type of generation ownership.

This study analyzes the variations in economic benefits among EC members and the EC as a whole. The study is based on a simulation of an EC ’s operation in Bogota, Colombia applying current regulations. Four scenarios are evaluated (Conventional, Non-cooperative with renewable energy, Cooperative with centralized renewable energy, and, Cooperative with centralized/distributed renewable energy). The members of the CE are residential and commercial consumers.

The annual cost of electricity (COE) is used to measure the operational efficiency of the EC. The results of the simulations indicate that, varying the ownership of the generation sources within the EC, ceteris paribus, the total COE of the EC is constant. The change is observed in the distribution of profits among the EC members. Due to the priority given to self-consumption, members who own generation sources obtain greater profits than community generation source users.

A methodology has been developed to assess the impact of a new member joining on the individual and group energy and economic management of an EC that is already operating. A quick and simple indicator has been obtained about the potential benefit that a new member can bring to the already operational EC. To do this, it is only necessary to know the annual energy consumption to compare it with the maximum self-consumption of the original members. The results obtained in the scenarios analysed indicate that the proposed indicator is very close to the result obtained through complete scenario simulations, demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed indicator.