How Smart Metering and Smart Charging may Help a Local Energy Community in Collective Self-Consumption in Presence of Electric Vehicles

Abstract

The 2018/2001/EU renewable energy directive (RED II) underlined the strategic role of energy communities in the EU transition process towards sustainable and renewable energy. In line with the path traced by RED II, this paper proposes a solution that may help local energy communities in increasing self-consumption. The proposed solution is based on the combination of smart metering and smart charging. A set of smart meters returns the profile of each member of the community with a time resolution of 5 s; the aggregator calculates the community profile and regulates the charging of electric vehicles accordingly. An experimental test is performed on a local community composed of four users, where the first is a consumer with a Nissan Leaf, whereas the remaining three users are prosumers with a photovoltaic generator mounted on the roof of their home. The results of the experimental test show the feasibility of the proposed solution and demonstrate its effectiveness in increasing self-consumption. The paper also calculates the subsidy that the community under investigation would receive if the current Italian incentive policies for renewables were extended to local energy communities; this subsidy is discussed in comparison with the subsidies that the three prosumers individually receive thanks to the net metering mechanism. This paper ends with an economic analysis and calculation of savings on bills when the four users create the local energy community and adopt the proposed combination of smart metering and smart charging.

Performance of Smart Revenue Meters Under Bidirectional Active Energy Flows in Energy Communities

“…The output active energy increment, Δ𝐴 -46 (𝑘), and active power, 𝑃 -46 (𝑘), can be obtained by integration over time period 𝑇 4. , as in (11) for FILT. Unlike for FILT, however, 𝑇 4. does not necessarily have to be an integer multiple of the fundamental half-period (𝑁 ⋅ 𝑇 !…”

“…Because of citizen participation in all markets, either by generating, consuming, sharing, or selling electricity, the market platforms for local energy trading, including peer-to-peer trading, are currently being developed and tested worldwide within local energy communities [11], [12]. For any business model adopted, the use of bidirectional revenue meters capable of separately registering positive and negative energy flows will be crucial in all circumstances.…”

A Heuristic Method to Calculate the Capacity of Residential PV-BESS in Providing Upward Flexibility Services in Energy Communities

“…To this end, the HEMS has necessarily to be able to exchange data and information, especially with the aggregator [26], [27] implementing the most modern technologies such as smart contracts and Blockchain, [28], [29] or 5G [30]. Besides the HEMS measures the power flow to the meter [31], [32] and it governs the charge/discharge of the batteries sending set points to the ac/dc converter. These three functionalitiescommunication, measurement, and control -are likely basic requirements for the member's participation in an ENCO.…”

Sharing Is Caring: Exploring Distributed Solar Photovoltaics and Local Electricity Consumption through a Renewable Energy Community

“…Similar studies have been conducted regarding self-consumption and self-sufficiency indexes evaluation in communities based on renewable energy sharing, as presented in [42] for a household's energy sharing inside a Portuguese REC, focusing on the interplays between prosumers and economic analysis, in [43] for the evaluation of SCI and SSI based on PV systems with storage in a REC in Italy, and in [44] for analyzing SCI and SSI for RECs constituted by members that live in the same building and have a PV installation in the common roof area for different regions of Spain. Other studies that analyze SCI and SSI in other scenarios were produced, such as an evaluation of a PV system sizing according to those indexes for a subway station in Romania [45] and a study about the impact of SCI and SSI related to the installation of an electric vehicle charging station for a household PV prosumer [46]. This paper is structured as follows.…”