Analysis of the possible effective imbalances within an energy community

Distributed energy entities such as energy communities (ECs), Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) and distributed generation (DG) are the new ingredients of the energy transition, which aims to more sustainable energy systems. However, the power grids should be able to accommodate these new entities remaining reliable and secure, otherwise, the energy transition would fail. In particular, with the increasing diffusion of Non-Programmable Renewable Sources (NPRS), the volatility in energy production increased, as well as the dispatching costs incurred by the Transmission System Operators (TSO): the latter are then reflected in the end-users' bills. The thesis discusses the possible effective imbalances within a fictitious energy community: these imbalances born from the difference between the real-time (RT) exchange with the grid and the forecasted (FO) one, being the latter the programmes post balancing market (BM). The imbalances are then valued using an imbalance price, which reflects the costs incurred by the TSO for offsetting them. First, the EC is built: it involves 3,377 users located in several districts in Turin, while the PV power is sized based on the yearly consumption. Then, the Italian legislation is applied to compute the imbalance settlement during at least 1 year, and comparing 2 scenarios: Scenario 1 and Scenario 2, respectively without and with the PV production. Finally, the imbalances are evaluated yearly, monthly and for typical days: the results show potential imbalances fees for thousands of euros yearly, higher in Scenario 2, where the imbalances result higher. The imbalanced cases are also compared with the cases without imbalances, finding that depending on the imbalance prices, the gains or losses can be very different passing from a relevant period to another. The thesis shows that potentially the ECs could lead to relevant monetary and energy movements within the Ancillary Services Market (ASM): this work can be used as starting point to introduce the usage of batteries to reduce the effective imbalances and to participate to the ASM in quality of VPP.