Development of a tool for the feasibility analysis of renewable energy communities in Italy

Renewable energy sources (RES) are fundamental to produce energy in a cleaner, sustainable, and affordable way. European Commission is strongly committed to foster RES among Member States and in the last years it has set a legislative and regulatory framework where renewable sources and energy efficiency play a prominent role. In particular, Directive 2018/2001 paves the way to Renewable Energy Communities (REC), a configuration that encourages energy sharing and is aimed to provide environmental, economic and social benefits for members and territories where they operate. Dedicated tools are required to analyze and manage these new configurations, enabling their design, development, and management. In this context, ENEA developed RECON, Renewable Energy Community ecONomic simulator, a web application aimed at supporting REC promoters in performing preliminary energy, economic, and financial assessments of RECs, in accordance with the Italian current legislative and regulatory frameworks. This paper presents a new set of models implemented for RECON tool, which can handle the different mix of members in a REC, and calculate energy consumption. Basing on actual bill data and estimating the contribution of self-consumption for prosumers with PV plants installed onsite, the model is able to automatically create customized hourly electricity consumption and withdrawal profiles that can be used to calculate energy sharing among the REC members and the economic feasibility of the initiatives.