Digital Transformation for Local Energy Communities: Challenges and Opportunities

Local Energy Communities (LECs) are a key element of the transition to a low-carbon economy, as they enable citizens, businesses, and public entities to produce, consume, and share renewable energy. To operate and integrate effectively into the energy system, LECs need to digitalize and semantically interoperate their data. However, LECs encounter several obstacles to achieving full digitalization, such as the lack of common standards and vocabularies, the diversity of data sources and formats, the privacy and security issues, and the need for user-friendly and scalable solutions. Moreover, LECs face challenges in collecting and analysing the data necessary to model the behaviour of building occupants, energy flexible resources, distributed generation, and grid conditions, which are essential for improving the design and operation of LECs in a variety of real-world settings and increase community engagement. In this paper, these challenges have been analysed and recommendations have been provided, based on the experience gained through OMEGA-X project. By developing a multi vector energy data space and innovative data-driven services, OMEGA-X enables local energy communities to maximize renewable energy use, reduce costs, contribute to decarbonization and achieve collective self-consumption. Two project’s pilot sites, a residential energy community in Portugal and a commercial energy community in Serbia, have been presented to demonstrate the potential of data-driven platforms to optimize energy operations, engage citizens, and foster sustainable energy markets.