Energy-Economic Analysis of Renewable Energy Communities with Photovoltaic Plant Production

This work explores the potential of Renewable Energy Communities (Comunità Energetiche Rinnovabili CER) in the Italian context, with a particular focus on the recent regulatory developments that enable and promote their establishment. In the first part of the work an overview of the national legislative framework governing CERs is provided, outlining the main rules, incentives, and implementation challenges. The main point of the thesis was developed in collaboration with the Italian company COESA, an Energy Service Company (ESCo) in the energy transition field and focuses on the development and evaluation of a comprehensive energy and economic model for potential CER configurations proposed by the WEcer initiative. Hourly photovoltaic production was estimated using PVGIS data, while energy consumption profiles of the prosumers were either directly collected from the portal e-distribuzione or reconstructed using standard GSE profiles. By using these data, the model calculates hourly energy injection into the grid and identifies the amount of shared energy within each configuration. An economic model was then developed to assess the financial benefits for participants, considering current incentives linked to shared energy. The simulations were carried out using a structured Excel tool, allowing for flexibility in testing different configurations. Based on the results, the most efficient combinations of producers and consumers were selected in order to maximize both energy and economic aspects. Finally, a global economic model for the overall WEcer system was constructed by aggregating the results of individual configurations. The study demonstrates the effectiveness of a data-driven approach in designing optimized energy communities and supports the role of CERs in promoting the energy transition at a local level.