“National Energy Conservation and Sustainable Lifestyles Day” is celebrated every year on February 16 to spread the culture of environmental sustainability and resource conservation. Certainly the best opportunity to learn more about a concept that is gaining more and more relevance in the energy landscape: Renewable Energy Communities (RECs).
These communities represent an innovative and collaborative way of managing electricity, promoting sustainability and sharing among participants.
Renewable Energy Communities: a collaborative model
An ERC brings together a collection of entities, citizens, SMEs and municipalities who voluntarily join together within a specific geographic area to share the energy produced locally by one or more renewable energy plants, thus providing for their own energy needs.
The establishment of Renewable Energy Communities in an area, promotes the use of green energy and the transition from centralized energy, to distributed energy.
How does a Renewable Energy Community work?
Underlying the operation of a Renewable Energy Community is an organization with a strong collaborative and sharing character.
In particular, there are two cardinal principles that define it:
Energy exchange: participants can exchange the energy produced. For example, if a citizen has a surplus of solar energy, he can share it with his neighbor.
Local production: within an ERC, an energy production facility based on renewable sources, such as photovoltaics, is established. This facility is shared among community members.
But how do we ensure the efficiency of this system? The role of smart grids can make a concrete difference.
Smart Grid: intelligence in the service of energy
A smart grid is literally a “smart power grid,” capable of autonomously redistributing electricity among different connected nodes as needed.
The deployment of smart grids optimizes the management of renewable resources, especially within an ERC.
The concrete case of solar panel operation, provides us with a good example. As we know, panels alternate between times when they produce more energy than they need and times when production is completely zero. Smart grids can manage these fluctuations dynamically, providing a balance that avoids energy waste while ensuring a constant amount of energy to power one’s home or business.
Italian regulations and CERs
Today in Italy, about a hundred RECs have been established. These are regulated by the activities of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security which, just in these days, published the Decree stimulating the establishment and development of Renewable Energy Communities and widespread self-consumption in Italy.
On the one hand, the Decree provides for a non-repayable grant, supported by the NRP, which aims to support communities implementing facilities (in areas with less than five thousand inhabitants), recognizing up to 40 percent of eligible costs.
At the same time, an incentive tariff is introduced on renewable energy produced and shared throughout the country. This mechanism allows participants in CERs to receive an incentive for self-produced and shared energy.
Through this measure, it is estimated that the total development of five gigawatts of renewable energy production facilities will be fostered.
GSE (Gestore dei Servizi Energetici) also undertakes to provide support to citizens interested in the establishment of RECs, in cooperation with MASE.
Renewable energy community. All the benefits
CERs are a tool that can significantly contribute to the deployment of renewable energy installations and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, among the side benefits being that consuming renewable (self-generated) energy means relieving the burden on the national grid.
Smart Grids and Renewable Energy Communities are thus an important step toward a sustainable future.
CER and electric vehicle charging
How do you get around in an ERC? As you prefer, of course, but the choice of an electric vehicle is unbeatable if you want to make a difference! And here’s the good news, within an Energy Community there can also be charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.
Today, the energy absorbed for charging a vehicle is considered by the GSE for the purpose of calculating shared energy within the ERC. Wanting to look to tomorrow and the development of bi-directionality, here are vehicles capable of returning energy to the shared grid and devices capable of dialoguing with photovoltaics such as Prism Solar, will be an exceptional added value to the collaborative model.
Today we are called to collaborate, to invest in smart technologies and to promote awareness of the importance of energy conservation. Only then can we build the world we believe in, one in which energy is clean, affordable and sustainable for all.
