Comparison of business models of energy communities and optimization of an existing energy community

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to compare different European countries and their approaches on the legal and technical realization of energy communities within the country. A general overview about the topic of energy communities is given to provide a background, which is needed, to answer the research question: How can energy communities be used and optimized to achieve, apart from the ecologic, economic and social advantages for the consumers a financial benefit? The national frameworks of seven countries were analyzed and compared with each other. From the observed countries, only six of them are part of the EU (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain). Switzerland is part of the thesis due to its geographic location and to see how a country resolves an issue without the need for adaption according to an external organisation. In general, the EU splits energy communities into two types, Citizen Energy Communities (CECs) and Renewable Energy Communities (RECs). They follow the same goal but have differences in the used type of energy and differ in their area of operation. Different types of technologies are explained in detail and then compared with real examples of energy communities. This was conducted to see differences in the observed countries and identify the aims of energy communities within the countries, such as conquering energy poverty or gaining independency from the grid. In the last section, scenario simulations were conducted to see if energy communities can be optimized to gain a financial benefit from them. The two scenarios, that were simulated with Python, were the implementation of central energy storage with five different sizes and the addition of a run of river hydro power plant with a central energy storage. The simulation itself shows an improvement of the performance of the energy community according to the defined KPIs. Apart from the technical side a dynamic cost calculation was performed to assess the financial impact. This shows, that both scenarios can save money, but only with the three smallest battery types. This results in the following answer for the research question: “Yes, energy communities can be optimized to achieve a financial benefit, but every energy community needs to be assessed separately according to their used technologies and needs.”

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Robert Höller (Supervisor)