Deployment of Modular Renewable Energy Sources and Energy Storage Schemes in a Renewable Energy Valley

Quantifying the challenge of reaching a 100% renewable energy power system for the United States

Citizen-driven Renewable Energy (RE) projects of various kinds, known collectively as community energy (CE), have an important part to play in the worldwide transition to cleaner energy systems. On the basis of evidence from 8 European countries, we investigate CE, over approximately the last 50 years (c.1970-2018), through the lens of Social Innovation (SI). We carry out a detailed review of literature around the social dimension of renewable energy; we collect, describe and map CE initiatives from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK; and we unpack the SI concept into 4 operational criteria which we suggest are essential to recognising SI in CE. These are: 1) Crises and opportunities; 2) the agency of civil society; 3) reconfiguration of social practices, institutions and networks; 4) new ways of working. We identify three main phases of SI in CE. The environmental movements of the 1960s and the “oil shocks” of the 1970s provided the catalyst for a series of innovative societal responses around energy and self-sufficiency. A second wave of SI relates to the mainstreaming of RE and associated government support mechanisms. In this phase, with some important exceptions, successful CE initiatives were mainly confined to those countries where they were already embedded as innovators in the previous phase. The third phase of CE innovation relates to the societal response to the Great Recession that began in 2007-8 and lasted most of the subsequent decade. CE initiatives formed around this time were also strongly focused around democratization of energy and citizen empowerment in the context of rising energy prices, a weak economy, and a production and supply system dominated by excessively powerful multinational energy firms. CE initiatives today are more diverse than at any time previously, and are likely to continue to act as incubators for pioneering initiatives addressing virtually all aspects of energy. However, large multinational energy firms remain the dominant vehicle for delivery of the energy transition, and the apparent excitement in European policy circles for “community energy” does not extend to democratization of energy or genuine empowerment of citizens.

Market-based participation of energy storage scheme to support renewable energy sources for the procurement of energy and spinning reserve

Community energy (CE) initiatives have been progressively spreading across Europe and are increasingly proposed as innovative and alternative approaches to guarantee higher citizen participation in the transition toward cleaner energy systems. This paper focuses the attention on Italy, a Southern European country characterized by relatively low CE sector development. It fills a gap in the literature by eliciting and presenting novel and comprehensive evidence on recent Italian CE sector developments. Through a stepwise approach it systematically maps and reviews Italian CE initiatives, to then focus the attention on three specific case studies to further explore conditions for development as well as of success within the Italian energy system. The analysis presents an Italian CE sector still at its niche level, characterized by small initiatives largely dependent on national photovoltaics (PV) policy support. It also points out how only larger initiatives, able to operate at national scale, developing multiple projects and differentiating their activities have managed to continue growing at the time of discontinuity of policy support and contraction of the national renewable energy market. Recent EU and national legislative development might support revived development of CE initiatives in Italy.

Recent European policy efforts stimulate the emergence of community energy initiatives, and the European Commission explicitly aims to enable a just transition towards a low-carbon energy system. One of the prevalent assumptions is that fostering community energy will bring about energy justice. Intrigued by this assumption, we conduct an extending systematic literature review to explore how the notion of energy justice is discussed within scholarly work on community energy initiatives in Europe. We detected a tendency of community energy scholars to not (yet) fully employ the inherent scope the concept of energy justice entails. Therefore, we propose that community energy justice should be analyzed through three different lenses: energy justice occurring within community energy initiatives, between initiatives and related actors, and beyond initiatives. Extending the energy justice lens to address these different levels helps to better bring out the encompassing premise that the notion of energy justice entails, both analytically and in practice. Through our analysis different energy justice impacts come to the fore, for example related to social inequality: not all societal groups are equally positioned to benefit from policies focused on community initiatives. Considering the policy efforts to stimulate community energy development, we argue that these impacts can be amplified, due to cumulative power of many community energy initiatives together. Our contribution highlights that for making energy transitions just, a broader and more connected understanding of energy justice in the context of community energy initiatives is central.

With the continuous increase in the penetration of renewable energy and the rapid development of integrated energy system, we propose a capacity configuration model for the electricity, heat, and hydrogen system. First, we construct the electricity, heat, and hydrogen system model. And then aiming at the impact of wind and solar output and load demand uncertainty on the system capacity configuration, we establish the typical source-load scenarios to achieve a deterministic description of uncertain variables. On this basis, to maximize the net income of the system, we establish a bi-level iterative planning model for the electricity, heat, and hydrogen system. The upper model is the optimal capacity configuration model, and the lower layer is the optimal scheduling strategy model. The collaborative optimization of capacity configuration and scheduling strategy is realized through the cyclic iteration between the upper and lower models. Finally, we take a specific system as an example to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed bi-level iterative planning model.

Policy challenges to community energy in the EU: A systematic review of the scientific literature

Renewable energy (RE) is pivotal for achieving a net-zero future, with energy storage systems essential for maximizing its utility. This study introduces a modeling framework that simulates large-scale RE deployment in Taiwan, emphasizing hydrogen as a primary storage medium. Utilizing hourly time steps, the model assesses various energy generation and storage configurations to demonstrate the technical feasibility of meeting Taiwan's 2050 net-zero target, which calls for a 60 % RE share primarily through solar and wind resources. However, achieving this target and the ambitious goal of 100 % RE penetration requires substantial enhancements in both generation capacity and storage solutions. The research evaluates the economic impacts by analyzing the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), revealing that optimal configurations, such as a wind capacity of 30 GW with a 5 % minimum capacity factor constraint on electrolyzers, significantly reduce LCOE to $0.176/kWh, underscoring the cost-effectiveness of hydrogen storage compared to battery alternatives in large-scale settings. The study underscores the necessity for ongoing investigations into replacing thermal power plants and maintaining grid stability amidst high RE penetration. To fully harness Taiwan's RE potential and contribute to global sustainability, effective deployment of hydrogen storage will require robust stakeholder support, continual technological advancements, and enabling policies. This framework, while tailored to Taiwan's power system, offers insights applicable to various global contexts.

Circular economy principles in community energy initiatives through stakeholder perspectives

Optimal sizing of renewable energy storage: A techno-economic analysis of hydrogen, battery and hybrid systems considering degradation and seasonal storage

Conventional fossil-fuel energy resources are being drastically depleted; thus, the current shift towards renewable energy (RE) resources has become imperative. However, there are many impediments to the adoption of renewable power generation. These impediments can be overcome by enacting policies to encourage the acceptance of sustainable energy resources. For instance, the net-metering policy can provide the necessary incentives to promote the development of local distributed energy sources, primarily solar photovoltaic and wind generators. While there has been significant advancement and development in net-metering in Asia with the increased penetration of RE, at present there is a lack of systematic review in this area. This paper aims to present an in-depth review on net-metering advances and challenges, current RE shares, and future RE targets in the Asian region. Additionally, a case study is performed and an economic analysis of net-metering regulations in an Asian country is carried out. In this study, the monetary benefits of net-metering policies for residential consumers are proved. It is envisaged that the information gathered in this paper will be a valuable one-stop source of information for Asian researchers working on this topic.

Positive energies? An empirical study of community energy participation and attitudes to renewable energy

Renewable energy (RE) penetration has strongly increased in the electricity market worldwide. Variability and availability of RE are challenging load-serving entity’s (LSE) decision-making about energy procurement portfolio and retail price offer. The influence of RE penetration on LSE’s optimal decisions would increase with penetration level. This necessitates an investigation on LSE’s participation strategy in electricity market under significant RE penetration. Besides RE, consumers’ flexible demand may negatively affect LSE’s decisions and eventually its expected profit. This necessitates dynamic retail pricing to manage flexible demand and exploit monetary benefits from it. In this perspective, this paper presents a model for LSE to determine optimal dynamic retail prices and optimal energy procurement portfolio in the presence of flexible demand and significant RE penetration. A case study is employed to illustrate and validate the proposed model.

The paper presents the optimization of an energy supply system for an industrial area. The system is mainly composed of a district heating network (DHN), of a solar thermal plant with long term heat storage, of a set of combined heat and power units (CHP) and of additional thermal/cooling energy supply machines. The thermal vector can be produced by solar thermal modules, by fossil-fuel cogenerator or by conventional boilers. The optimization algorithm is based on a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model and it has to determine the optimal structure of the energy system and the size of the components (solar field area, heat storage volume, machines sizes, etc.). The model allows to calculate the economical and environmental benefits of the solar thermal plant compared to the cogenerative production, as well as the share of the thermal demand covered by renewable energies. The aim of the paper is to identity the optimal energy production mix able to meet the user energy demands and furthermore how the solar thermal energy integration affects the optimal energy system configuration. The average costs of the heat produced for the users have been evaluated for different optimal configurations, and it emerges that the solution including some cogenerators located in strategic production units, the district heating network, the long term heat storage and a solar plant of proper size, allows achieving the lowest cost of the heat. Thus, the integrated solution turns out to be the best from both the economical and environmental point of view.

Joint operation of mobile battery, power system, and transportation system for improving the renewable energy penetration rate