Energy communities' impact on grids - Energy community embedment increasing grid flexibility and flourishing electricity markets

The new role of energy communities represents both an opportunity and a challenge for DSOs and, consequently, for TSOs. They can unlock active consumers' flexibility potential and more effectively integrate distributed renewable resources and new technologies, such as rooftop photovoltaic facilities, electric vehicles or batteries, etc. In contrast, energy communities must fulfil all related duties and responsibilities when acting as suppliers, active customers or any other existing market role. They must act on equal terms with other market players.

Each country offers a wide choice of different legal forms of organizations for a newly created energy community entity, which leads to a wildly grown landscape. They are actually generally limited to a certain redistribution of cash flow. Their upgrade to fully integrated supporting the demand response process in distribution and transmission levels will require solid organization forms and business cases. In the technical aspect, remarkable scientific works are being done to improve the load matching of individual customers and at the community level. However, none of these studies considers the grid, constraints, challenges, and coordinated operation, so the solutions are not directly practicable on a large scale.

This paper first gives a brief overview of energy communities developments, followed by an analysis of the impact of large-scale implementation of energy communities on the power grids. This is pursued by discussing economic processing in the power industry and business organization, as both are crucial for promoting viable energy communities. The paper finalizes conclusions and recommendations on innovation and research activities.

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