The activity presented in this report is part of a larger research project aimed at increasing end-user participation in the transition process to a low-carbon electricity system. In the process of transposing the RED II directive, RSE was commissioned to launch a monitoring campaign of collective self-consumption schemes and energy communities with the aim of assessing the technical and economic impacts of these configurations in the electricity system.

To this end, in this first year of research, an operational procedure has been defined for the selection of 5 collective self-consumption configurations and 5 energy communities among those operating in the national territory and regularly accredited to the GSE. The operational procedure establishes the selection criteria and highlights the information necessary to select a representative sample of the current configurations present on the national territory. The monitoring activity involves an in-depth study of the energy withdrawals and technologies present in the configuration, with the aim of assessing the level of self-consumption and the economic impact associated with the use of these configurations.

With regard to the latter aspect, this first year of research has focused on developing a simplified methodology aimed at determining whether a storage system used in the AUC configuration is able to compensate for the variability of the renewable source. This will improve its forecasting and, consequently, reduce the costs associated with dispatching the collective self-consumption configuration. In support of this activity, work has begun on updating the energy functions present in the PREVO laboratory, which is currently set up to validate use cases based on optimized management of a prosumer’s internal resources.

The new functionalities will enable the PREVO laboratory to be configured as an integral part of a system in a collective self-consumption configuration and to validate energy functions aimed at maximizing economic benefits and providing ancillary services.