Grid-optimal energy community planning from a systems perspective

Energy communities (ECs) are a potential enabler for the socio-technical transition to carbon-neutrality. Their emergence depends on setting the right course across various dimensions: the legislative system, social psychology, the economic system, the technological system, and the natural ecosystem. A goal of this research is to identify success factors for energy community projects and their mutual influence in different stages of project development along these dimensions. We demonstrate that the project’s success in the motivation phase depends much more on the mutual influence of the economic system on social psychology compared to the project development or implementation and operation phase. This comprehensive analysis enables planners and policymakers to understand requirements and their role in the promotion of ECs. Another research goal is to understand the impact of different EC planning scenarios on both the EC profitability and the network. In a real network case study, we show that EC planning which considers network constraints can achieve high PV penetration while avoiding critical grid-stability issues. At the same time, the community yields almost the same benefits as in the EC cost-optimal planning scenario. The scenarios partially reflect the before-mentioned dimensions used to analyse and discuss EC planning from a holistic perspective, which reveals potential enablers and barriers for grid-friendly ECs.