Performance and prospects of urban energy communities conditioned by the built form and function: A systematic investigation using agent-based modeling

Abstract

Studies on energy communities, as a means to help achieve sustainability goals such as self-sufficiency, rarely consider the influence of urban context (built form and function) on their performance. This work thus studies urban energy performance under the community and individual configuration of prosumer buildings by expanding an agent-based modeling framework, which couples built context with the energy demand and supply of an urban area, and conducting a comprehensive case study in two climates. The performance aspects covered include energy, economics, and grid impact. The case study investigates the performance of compact and open high-, mid-, and low-rise areas that have different land area-wise proportions of common commercial and residential buildings acting as a community and individually. Results show that the self-sufficiency of mixed-use high-rise and mid-rise energy communities remained below 15 % and 30 % respectively. Unlike high-rise areas, mid-rise areas were unable to achieve 100 % self-consumption through the community mode. In contrast, the mixed-use low-rise energy communities achieved almost 45 % average self-sufficiency in some cases but remained far short of reaching their full self-sufficiency potential as their average self-consumption did not exceed 80 %. The findings are vital for developing context-specific plans and policies concerning energy communities and urban sustainability.