A Roadmap for the Design, Operation and Monitoring of Renewable Energy Communities in Italy

Emanuele Cutore, Alberto Fichera and Rosaria Volpe ()
Additional contact information
Emanuele Cutore: Department of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy
Alberto Fichera: Department of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy
Rosaria Volpe: Department of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-26

Abstract: Renewable energy communities (RECs) aim at achieving economic, environmental, and social benefits for members and for society. This paper presents a roadmap for the design, operation, and monitoring of renewable energy communities in Italy, fundamental to guide and orient any stakeholder involved in the decision-making process of a REC. The roadmap is inspired by the Deming Cycle, also known as Plan-Do-Check-Act, which provides a framework for continuous improvement and standardization of the procedures. To demonstrate the practical application of the roadmap, a real case study is presented for Italian energy communities, making full adoption of data derived from official databases and using a real urban district as a case study. The findings of phase I in the “do” stage of the roadmap indicate that the REC could lead to a decrease in carbon emissions of roughly 38% and could support 51 to 67 families through REC’s revenues, depending on the installed PV capacity. Furthermore, both physical self-consumption and virtual self-consumption schemes assist in the sustainable transition of the built environment, where consumers have a significant impact on the electrical markets. Therefore, these results validate the roadmap’s effectiveness in promoting an informed design and implementation of RECs while guiding energy, social, and political decisions.

Keywords: stakeholders; emissions; economic and social indicators; energy management; monitoring; optimization; MILP; linearization; sustainability assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/10/8118/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/10/8118/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:10:p:8118-:d:1148536

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().