How Do Aggregated Consumption Impact on the Analysis of Wind-Powered Energy Communities?

Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) offer a promising opportunity to increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, contributing to a more sustainable future. To properly estimate the potential of a REC, it is essential to have at least hourly data on both its consumption and its power production. However, in the current context, end-users often face challenges in accessing their hourly consumption data. The subsequent availability of only aggregated consumption data (such as that on a monthly or annual basis), has an impact on analysis and feasibility studies that can be conducted on future RECs. This paper deals with the simulation of a wind-powered REC representative of typical communities located in central Italy. The case study utilizes real hourly-measured energy consumption data from users as inputs for the simulation. To investigate the discrepancies among RECs configurations with various production-to-consumption ratios, two scenarios were analyzed: one with a total installed peak power of 300 kW<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</inf> and another with double the installed power. The results are compared with the outcomes obtained by simulations of the same REC based on groups of hourly consumption data estimated from grouped data with increasing levels of aggregation. The study’s findings indicate that the impact of consumption aggregation in the computation of shared energy is strongly related to the production-to-consumption ratio of the community, with a more pronounced effect when the energy produced by the REC exceeds the community’s consumption.