Renewable energy community design and evaluation according to the Italian regulation

Abstract

The target of a Renewable Energy Community (REC) is to improve the renewable energy consumption without forcing the grid to work as a power backup and avoid the installation of large energy storage systems. The paper proposes a comparison between different REC configurations with the same annual energy consumption of 500 MWh corresponding to about 200 residential houses in northern Italy. The comparison includes different kinds of building destination (residential, commercial, industrial), and different photovoltaic (PV) installed capacity. The results highlight the fundamental role of a proper design of the Renewable Energy Community configuration. RECs based on members with complementary loads enhance the renewable energy consumption by increasing the fraction of shared energy. Different roles (consumer and prosumer) are fundamental to provide the proper energy distribution during the sunny hours by producing a win-win condition. Nevertheless, an increase of the PV capacity can produce a detrimental effect on the shared energy ratio due the non-contemporaneity of production and consumption.