From consumers to prosumers: the rise of Energy Communities and their role in the energy transition

This paper provides an overview of energy communities, analyzing the energy context, with environmental and climate problems, that have led to the need to develop smart and sustainable solutions for a new social model of energy self-production. The concept of energy community contains important objectives for the sustainable evolution of cities, firstly the spread of renewable energy. Exploring the methodologies and approaches used in the literature, conclusions were drawn to be able to manage and understand the functioning of zero-impact energy systems, defined as nearly-zero energy districts, where energy is designed to be shared. To overcome the boundaries of the individual building and consider the influence of the surrounding urban context, starting from the concept of a smart city and the limits of the model itself, the importance of having an overview of the urban area is defined, and citizens themselves to cooperate in the design and management of energy systems and energy production, thus considering the concept of selection of energy flows. By defining the concept of the energy community, the state of the art in Europe is explained, by analyzing real cases and classifying them according to technical characteristics, types of modeling/optimization approach and methodology used to assess the performance of the energy community. The final aim is to show the potential advantage, through the evaluation of the reviewed articles, to use the redevelopment of an ex-industrial area such as Bagnoli (Naples, Italy) to make it a renewable and sustainable energy community. © 2023 University of Split, FESB.