Renewable energy sources, in particular those based on solar radiation, are growing rapidly and are planned to play an instrumental role in building power systems to reach the 2030 and 2050 energy and climate mitigation objectives. However, new actors have been introduced into the energy field, highlighting the importance of the role of citizens and communities in building such energy systems. To outline the significance of citizens in the development of solar energy communities and to describe the benefits of and barriers to their implementation so far, a comprehensive literature review has been carried out based on 64 thoroughly selected, reliable scientific publications (published within 2015–2021), revealing the latest trends, technologies and research in this field. The research focuses on four consumer interest areas: policy, economic, technical and social, covering the following subsections: policy, trading model, economic assessment, business model, energy management, demand response, modelling tools and consumer adoption. Within each subsection the conducted review seeks to answer the questions related to the further development and implementation of PV energy communities, considering consumer needs and revealing the possible solutions.
The implementation of the market mechanism, which includes electricity price fluctuation, and a wide integration of intermittent generation, namely solar PV and wind energy, in energy production have changed the role and operation manner of conventional generation. It is partly or not at all adapted to new running conditions. Therefore, the efficiency and flexibility of conventional generation has to be improved. The numerical approach is developed in the context of combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) technology to adapt its running conditions to the electricity market mechanism. The developed approach was verified on a case study of the Baltic States (Latvia) examples in a multi-paradigm numerical computing environment MATLab. The obtained results show that the added profit is gained through production of supplementary electricity, and the impact of cycling operation is reduced through the decrease of cycling operation ranges numbers and the substitution of start-up with a less adverse one from a technical and economical point of view. The developed approach can be adapted to various technologies and situations by adding appropriate characteristics and constraints of technology.
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