PV Assessment and Analysis for Deploying a Municipality : wide Energy Community

Abstract: Renewable energy communities (REC) are an instrument that empowers consumers and helps them become prosumers in the energy transition to decarbonize the energy grid. The European Commission introduced the concept through the Renewable Energy Directive (RED2) in 2019. Many energy communities lobbied during the elaboration of the amendment to have it introduced. In so doing, their experience and hardships were considered to facilitate their implementation. Rivas-Vaciamadrid (RIVAS) is a municipality in Spain that aims to convert itself to a REC. One of the first steps to accomplish this goal has been assessing its PV potential. In January 2022, RIVAS launched the project, and Research to Market Solutions (R2M) won the tendering process by offering a thorough proposal to perform the PV assessment and define a strategy to deploy the REC. The thesis work is focused on evaluating the potential of RIVAS REC by creating the buildings' stock through the use of geographical information systems. The analysis creates building archetypes to individually create the energy demand profiles and obtain the annual energy demand. The archetypes are also used to evaluate the PV area available in each building. Through the use of a simulation engine from the company IES, the simulation of the energy community is performed. The results show that RIVAS REC has an electricity consumption of 271.32 GWh/year. The cost of this electricity is 75.9 m€. Its PV potential capacity is of 292.81GWh/year. The annual PV produced generates a 41% self-sufficiency and 38% self-consumption. The municipality is composed of 4 sectors, residential, commercial, tertiary and industrial. The residential sector consumes 51% of the total electricity. The REC benefits itself by a 42% reduction in its annual electric tariff. The business model proposed consists of using the municipality buildings and deploying PVs on their roofs. These buildings will serve as hubs to create 17 energy communities. The electricity produced is self-consumed, reducing their electricity bill by 42%. The surplus electricity is sold to the members obtaining a profit that can be reinvested to support the additional PV deployment. The REC can achieve complete PV deployment from 10 to 17 years according to its operating expenses.