Prosperous Energy Communities: Prerequisites, Technical Solutions, and Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

Climatic conditions worldwide foster the integration of renewable and distributed energy resources into the power system and raise civic awareness for efficient and local energy usage. Power systems undergo radical structural changes: the increasing use of ICT and automation at the distribution and customer plant levels allows for more customer-centric business models, and recent EU directives have paved the way for citizens to participate in energy-related processes collectively. Energy communities arise that aim to generate environmental and social benefits by applying new business models. To enable their large-scale implementation, these energy communities must be designed to work in harmony with the grid and incentivize the cooperation and participation of the relevant stakeholders.

This Special Issue aims to promote the design of energy communities concerning technical, market-related, regulatory, legal, and organizational aspects. Its scope includes but is not limited to the following:

• Technical solutions (e.g., for monitoring and control) for energy communities;
• Regulatory aspects of energy communities;
• Legal aspects of energy communities;
• Markets for energy communities;
• Business cases for energy communities;
• Use cases (e.g., ancillary service provision) for energy communities;
• The organizational structure of energy communities.

Original research and review papers are cordially invited for submission.

Dr. Daniel-Leon Schultis
Prof. Dr. Albana Ilo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.