Design and Modeling Renewable Energy Communities: A Case Study in Cagliari (Italy)

Abstract

Renewable energy communities (RECs) are non-profit organizations made up of members who join to produce and exchange clean energy for sustainable development. This work analyzes different REC scenarios, considering energetic, economic, and environmental perspectives. The case study is a typical condominium of eight apartments with a low energy class in Cagliari (Italy). This study considers the condominium with different energy efficiency levels before and after retrofit interventions together with solar technologies to produce energy. Future scenarios include both the share of energy between the eight apartments within the condominium and a REC composed of two neighboring condominiums. At condominium scale, results showed better outcomes in aggregating the energy share from the PV generation into a single point of sharing (PoS). In the REC scenario with a neighboring building, and after retrofit interventions, the self-sufficiency index was increased by 26% with a decrease of 23% in GHG emissions, which shows the importance of having retrofitted and smart buildings boosting the renewable energy sources in achieving a more sustainable built environment. The methodology of this work with a new software can be a useful decision-making tool to test the effectiveness of RECs and it can be applied to building, neighborhood, or district scales.

The Role of Organised Civil Society in the Implementation of the Renewable Energy Transition and Renewable Energy Communities: A Qualitative Assessment

“…However, results explicitly addressing the role or qualitative potential of organised civil society within Renewable Energy Communities and their implementation are minimal in the initial sample and absent in the final filtered sample, showing a limited concern over this specific topic in the published academic literature. Three sources were identified by the whole search: (Mutani G. et al, 2019 [18]; Mutani G. et al, 2020 [19]; and Mutani G. et al, 2022 [20]). All three of them resulted in the initial outcome of the search as providing a definition of energy community as a 'cooperative/partnership/non-profit organization of final customers (municipalities, public and private entities, and citizens) aimed at achieving energy independence to guarantee energy security, low environmental impact, and affordable energy costs' (the same definition is included within the abstracts of all the three papers).…”

Decision-Making Approach to Urban Energy Retrofit—A Comprehensive Review

“…Integrated Environmental Solutions Virtual Environment (IES-VE) is a comprehensive building performance analysis software suite that incorporates a range of simulation and analysis tools. It was employed to investigate optimal decision-making for building energy retrofits [36,37]. IDA Indoor Climate and Energy (IDA ICE) is a building simulation software that was utilized to evaluate the potential of four large-scale building energy retrofit scenarios on the Finnish building stock [38].…”

A Management Strategy for Multi-Source Heat Pump Systems

“…This new figure was deeply discussed in the recent years due to its potential in increasing the public acceptance of renewable energy projects. In this field, Mutani and Usta [4] analyzed different renewable energy community scenarios considering energetic, economic, and environmental perspectives. From the results of their work, they found a decrease of about 23% in GHG emissions and an increase of about 26% in the share of locally self-consumed energy on the total energy consumption.…”