A Framework for Economic and Environmental Benefit Through Renewable Energy Community

• Published in: IEEE systems journal Vol. 17; no. 4; pp. 1 - 10
• Main Authors: Orlando, Matteo, Bottaccioli, Lorenzo, Quer, Stefano, Poncino, Massimo, Vinco, Sara, Patti, Edoardo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-12-2023; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Alternative energy sources; Biological system modeling; CO<sub xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">2 emissions; Community; Community participation; Costs; Customers; Economic analysis; Economic impact; energy community; Estimation; Expenditures; Geographic Information System (GIS)-based design; Impact analysis; Investment; Maintenance costs; Optimization; photovoltaic (PV) design; photovoltaic installation; photovoltaic optimization; Photovoltaic systems; Production; Renewable energy sources; Renewable resources; Urban environments
• ISSN: 1932-8184; 1937-9234
• DOI: 10.1109/JSYST.2023.3290941

The uprising necessity to lower CO<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{2}</tex-math></inline-formula> emissions and reduce energy expenditures fosters the shift toward renewable energy sources. Photovoltaic installations are the most widespread choice of renewable sources as they are relatively cheap and suited even for urban environments due to their small footprint. To reduce the initial investment and maintenance costs, the market is pushing customers to participate in renewable energy community, i.e., groups of customers that share photovoltaic systems to satisfy their energy demand by maximizing self-consumption and minimizing energy withdrawal from the power grid (eventually, they can even sell production surplus). However, the organization of these communities brings new challenges, such as optimizing the facility and estimating its economic impact. This article proposes a framework that combines geographical, meteorological, and demographic information to design optimal photovoltaic systems and evaluate the following economic benefits for the community members. To provide a complete analysis, we also consider the environmental benefit in terms of reducing CO<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{2}</tex-math></inline-formula> emissions. Our tests on several real-world case studies prove that our framework facilitates the installation of efficient photovoltaic systems, reducing both the energy withdrawn from the power grid and the CO<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{2}</tex-math></inline-formula> emissions.