Impact of large-scale deployment of energy communities on distribution grids

Abstract

Presented work aims to investigate into the impact of a large-scale deployment of renewable energy communities on distribution grids. To fulfill a large-scale investigation,a twofold approach is followed: First of all, various different wide-range scenarios will be considered and secondly, the large-scale impact will be covered in a geographical sense via the analysis with several low voltage as well as medium voltage grids. In order to do so, several scenarios based on European and Austrian legislature are constructed. These deterministic scenarios then undergo an optimization model with varying objectives. To highlight the impact of one community, a community scenario shall be compared against a no-community scenario thus each defining the optimization objective - individual self-optimization or community-wide optimization. Then, the optimizing frameworks results, that being load time-series data, undergo iterative static load flow calculations and an extensive data analysis is carried out upon these results looking into various aspects. It can be deduced, that the impact of a community increases with the scenarios de-urbanization and further increases with the additional installation of flexibilities such as PV and battery storage systems. However, while the communities trading certainly can affect the grid negatively, this usually is not the case as the economically viable options for large-scale peer-to-peer trading can be viewed as limited. In addition, renewable energy communities are usually capable of marginally reducing the communities residual load by increasing the self-consumption and better utilizing installed flexibilities due to their inherent peer-to-peer trading.