Contribution of Renewable Energy Communities to Grid Operation: Sensitivity and Statistical Analyses

This paper deals with renewable energy communities including energy storage systems, controllable and non-controllable loads, and electrolyzers for hydrogen production. The community’s resources are connected to different nodes of a distribution network and their contribution to network operation is analysed. The resources provide flexibility services to the grid in terms of demand response and reactive power support and optimize their operation by maximizing their economic benefits. Uncertainties due to renewable energy production and load demand strictly affect the obtainable economic benefit of the community members and the operation of the distribution network. For this reason, this paper proposes an analysis concerning community resource configuration and uncertain operation scenarios. Particularly, community self-consumption performance including hydrogen production potential is analyzed within the Italian incentive scheme.