Electrical Energy Storage in a Renewable Energy Community: a Planning Approach

Renewable energy communities are an important means to encourage the participation of citizens in the energy transition. The ownership of generation plants by the community citizens allows for lowering investments and thus energy costs, as well as increasing decentralized power plants at the local level. Also, sector-coupling energy services within a community, such as charging/discharging of electric vehicles, allow for providing flexibility services to the power system. In this framework, electrical energy storage systems have a central role. High shares of renewable energy imply the need to store electricity due to the variability of the energy source. Also, the use of electrical energy storage in electric vehicles or total renewable microgrids represent a step forward to decarbonizing systems that were heavily reliant on fossil fuel. From the end-user point of view, consumers can reduce their electricity bills, lowering peak demand charges as well as increasing self-consumption. In this context, the planning of energy storage systems for an energy community is a critical task which needs to be dealt with considering the regulatory framework. In this paper, a planning approach is proposed for optimally sizing both the storage and photovoltaic system in an energy community considering the incentive mechanism which is applied with reference to the shared community energy. The proposed approach properly accounts for a probabilistic characterization of the variables affecting the charging/discharging of storage systems, such as demand and renewable energy production. A case study referring to the Italian regulatory framework is proposed.