Renewable Energy Communities: Business Models of Multi-family Housing Buildings

Abstract

AbstractThe new European directive on renewable sources (RED II), which entered into force in December 2018, has opened new perspectives on the consumers and the decentralization of energy production. The purpose of this work is to analyze the inclusion of the energy communities in the Italian regulatory framework. The analysis focuses on the strategies that can be adopted by tenants to share rooftop photovoltaic module production and stored electricity and the consequent economic impact on their electricity bills. We have created a program that simulates various business models to be proposed to prosumers of multi-family housing buildings through which the economic return of every participant in the energy community is evaluated. The program receives as input the data of the renewable energy community, and it returns as output the electricity bill of each tenant, while considering the cost of the energy purchased from the grid and the economic revenues from self-consumption and from the sale of the excess production for each of the business model adopted. Therefore, the advantages and disadvantages of the models are highlighted. The net metering is profitable, but excluding it, energy sharing within communities would be the best scenario: In the considered case study, with 10 kW of PV installed power for a community, the reduction in costs is equal to 15%. Moreover, the convenience of a heterogeneous set of electricity demand profiles of the members is clearly evident (in the considered case study, this entails a 10% reduction in costs). Finally, the most proper business model must be selected, to assure the benefit for each energy community participant: The examined models result in a bill differential between −20 and 36% for each participant.KeywordsSmart communityBusiness and value modelChallenge common spaces for the sharing economyProsumerEnergy community