Abstract
Renewable energy sources, in particular those based on solar radiation, are growing rapidly and are planned to play an instrumental role in building power systems to reach the 2030 and 2050 energy and climate mitigation objectives. However, new actors have been introduced into the energy field, highlighting the importance of the role of citizens and communities in building such energy systems. To outline the significance of citizens in the development of solar energy communities and to describe the benefits of and barriers to their implementation so far, a comprehensive literature review has been carried out based on 64 thoroughly selected, reliable scientific publications (published within 2015–2021), revealing the latest trends, technologies and research in this field. The research focuses on four consumer interest areas: policy, economic, technical and social, covering the following subsections: policy, trading model, economic assessment, business model, energy management, demand response, modelling tools and consumer adoption. Within each subsection the conducted review seeks to answer the questions related to the further development and implementation of PV energy communities, considering consumer needs and revealing the possible solutions.
Highlights
Solar communities are gaining popularity worldwide [1]
In order to perform a more targeted literature analysis on each of these areas, they could be divided into smaller subsections: policy, trading model, economic assessment, business model, energy management, demand response, modelling tools and consumer adoption
An example of the benefits of implementing such an idea is described in [35], in which simulation in the HOMER environment shows that total net, energy and annual operational costs are reduced when the consumer operates in the solar community
Summary
Solar communities are gaining popularity worldwide [1]. This increase in popularity can be explained by a sharp drop in the price of photovoltaic (PV) panels and increase in PV efficiency, reaching 44.5% [2]. In order to find an answer to this question, this article reviews the scientific literature of recent years, which will be used to find solutions to the problems related to RES and energy communities. In order to perform a more targeted literature analysis on each of these areas, they could be divided into smaller subsections: policy, trading model, economic assessment, business model, energy management, demand response, modelling tools and consumer adoption. Given this division, the literature review seeks for solutions aimed at overcoming such consumer-relevant barriers in the form of these research questions: Policy: Does current policy support PV communities and what kinds of policy changes are needed?. Starting with the section and its subsections, the results of the literature are presented and answers to the earlier-mentioned research questions are sough
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