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Renewable Energy Communities (REC)

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "G1: Smart Cities and Urban Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (26 July 2023) | Viewed by 5348

Special Issue Editor

TU Wien Informatics, Favoritenstraße 9-11, 1040 Vienna, Austria
Interests: microgrids; smart home energy management; renewable energy communities; battery control; peer-to-peer energy trading

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Energy communities have emerged from the need to share the excess of renewable (mostly photovoltaic) energy produced by single- or multi-family buildings to a specific neighborhood.

The main prerequisites for the realization of an energy community are a data collection (smart metering) and control infrastructure, a local energy trading and billing platform and the existence of a regulatory framework that defines the role and contributions of the actors participating in the EG (such as the DSO grid tariffs).

The goals of building an energy community vary from achieving a better match between its demand and supply, maximizing the welfare of the whole community, and minimizing energy costs, to climate goals such as minimizing the community GHG emissions.

The aim of this Special Issue is to advance the state-of-the-art of a community energy system with respect to its different aspects: overall system architecture, demand and supply data forecast accuracy, energy scheduling optimization, trading mechanisms, and storage control. Therefore, we invite potential authors to submit research papers on the following topics of interest:

  • Renewable energy community planning: system architecture, business models, PV, and battery sizing;
  • Local energy markets and trading mechanisms;
  • Community energy storage: options and performance;
  • Multi-objective optimization models, impact on costs, and CO2 emissions;
  • Innovative solutions for integrated and low-carbon energy communities in smart cities;
  • Technologies for demand and supply data forecasting, energy management, and control.
Dr. Sandford Bessler
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • community microgrids
  • trading on local energy markets
  • residential storage control
  • optimization models
  • economic profitability of communities
  • community planning
  • community impact on CO2 emissions

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 2693 KiB  
Article
Operating Renewable Energy Communities to Reduce Power Peaks in the Distribution Grid: An Analysis on Grid-Friendliness, Different Shares of Participants, and Economic Benefits
by Robin Sudhoff, Sebastian Schreck, Sebastian Thiem and Stefan Niessen
Energies 2022, 15(15), 5468; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15155468 - 28 Jul 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 1950
Abstract
Improving the control of flexible assets in distribution grids, e.g., battery storages, electric vehicle charging points, and heat pumps, can balance power peaks caused by high renewable power generation or load to prevent overloading the grid infrastructure. Renewable energy communities, introduced as part [...] Read more.
Improving the control of flexible assets in distribution grids, e.g., battery storages, electric vehicle charging points, and heat pumps, can balance power peaks caused by high renewable power generation or load to prevent overloading the grid infrastructure. Renewable energy communities, introduced as part of the recast of the Renewable Energy Directive, provide a regulatory framework for this. As a multi-site energy management method, they can tap flexibility potential. The present work quantifies stimulus for renewable energy communities to incentivize the grid-friendly operation of flexible assets, depending on the shares of participants in rural, suburban, and urban grid topologies. Results indicate that an operation of the community, driven by maximizing the economic benefits of its members, does not clearly reduce the annual peak load at the low-voltage substation, while the operation strategy of a grid-friendly renewable energy community achieves a peak power reduction of 23–55%. When there is not full participation, forecasts of the residual load of non-participants provided by the distribution system operator can be considered in the optimization of the renewable energy community. For all simulation cases, the economic benefit between the two operation strategies differs by less than one percent, resulting in a very low additional incentive required for grid-friendliness in terms of reduced peak power. Thus, grid-friendly renewable energy communities might be a cost-effective way to defer future grid reinforcements. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energy Communities (REC))
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32 pages, 8554 KiB  
Article
Assessing the Influence of Different Goals in Energy Communities’ Self-Sufficiency—An Optimized Multiagent Approach
by Inês F. G. Reis, Ivo Gonçalves, Marta A. R. Lopes and Carlos Henggeler Antunes
Energies 2021, 14(4), 989; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14040989 - 13 Feb 2021
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 2643
Abstract
Understanding to what extent the emergence of prosumers and prosumagers organized in energy communities can impact the organization and operation of power grids has been one of the major recent research avenues at the European level. In renewable-based communities aiming to reach some [...] Read more.
Understanding to what extent the emergence of prosumers and prosumagers organized in energy communities can impact the organization and operation of power grids has been one of the major recent research avenues at the European level. In renewable-based communities aiming to reach some level of energy self-sufficiency, a key issue to be addressed is assessing how the presence of end-users playing different roles in the system (self-consuming, producing and trading, performing demand management, etc.) can influence the overall system performance. In this setting, this paper combines Distributed Artificial Intelligence and optimization approaches to assess how prosumagers and consumers pursuing different goals can influence the energy self-sufficiency of a local energy community. The residential demand is accurately modeled, and the agents’ preferences are considered in the modeling to represent a smart community. The results show that although energy community members may have conflicting individual goals, the overall system self-sufficiency can be maximized with economic benefits for all stakeholders, thus illustrating the advantages of energy communities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energy Communities (REC))
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