The Renewable Energy Communities: An Innovative Application to a Small Mountain Italian Municipality

Abstract

Renewable Energy Communities are novel virtuous models that aim to increase the penetration of renewable production technologies and ensure, at the same time, sustainable social and economic development. The recent European policy framework defined the Renewable Energy Communities as new actors in the electricity market and as entities sharing common goals in terms of sustainability. This paper investigates a case study based on a small mountain municipality in southern Italy. Results showed that the self-consumption and the benefit deriving from the incentivization of the shared energy generate the most relevant incomes. Then, two different strategies for the maximization of these two terms were proposed. Furthermore, the capacity expansion of the photovoltaic generation system was investigated, to align the local municipal policies to the goals of the Italian National Energy and Climate Plan.