Local Alternative for Energy Supply: Performance Assessment of Integrated Community Energy Systems

Binod Koirala,Paulien Herder,Tomás Gómez,José Chaves Ávila,Rudi Hakvoort

doi:10.3390/en9120981

Binod Koirala, Paulien Herder + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/en9120981

Copy DOI

Abstract

Integrated community energy systems (ICESs) are emerging as a modern development to re-organize local energy systems allowing simultaneous integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and engagement of local communities. Although local energy initiatives, such as ICESs are rapidly emerging due to community objectives, such as cost and emission reductions as well as resiliency, assessment and evaluation are still lacking on the value that these systems can provide both to the local communities as well as to the whole energy system. In this paper, we present a model-based framework to assess the value of ICESs for the local communities. The distributed energy resources-consumer adoption model (DER-CAM) based ICES model is used to assess the value of an ICES in the Netherlands. For the considered community size and local conditions, grid-connected ICESs are already beneficial to the alternative of solely being supplied from the grid both in terms of total energy costs and CO2 emissions, whereas grid-defected systems, although performing very well in terms of CO2 emission reduction, are still rather expensive.

Highlights

IntroductionThe energy system has been developed to meet the needs of local communities [1,2]
The energy system has been developed to meet the needs of local communities [1,2].The energy demand of the cities and communities increased rapidly with the increasing number of activities
The current energy system in which consumers purchase all their energy demand from the grid is considered as the baseline for the assessment of the integrated community energy systems (ICESs)

Summary

Introduction

The energy system has been developed to meet the needs of local communities [1,2]. The energy demand of the cities and communities increased rapidly with the increasing number of activities. Due to economies of scale, increasing demand as well as resource complementarity, the energy systems quickly took present, centralized and networked form. Built environment accounts for two-thirds of primary energy demand and 70% of global CO2 emissions [1]. The role of local communities and cities so far has been largely limited to the passive consumers. These issues demand the energy system transformation efforts to focus on cities and local communities

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion