Data-light simulation of hourly electricity demand for the techno-economic assessment of renewable energy community initiatives: Evidence from a case study in Italy

In the global pursuit of sustainable energy solutions, Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) have become promising mechanisms to enhance local energy production, distribution, and consumption efficiencies. While RECs are designed to foster environmental and social benefits, regulatory challenges continue to hinder their full development potential, particularly for small, informal citizen groups with limited resources. This study presents a simplified method for evaluating electricity demand of residential and non-residential buildings alongside photovoltaic (PV) production potential and assessing the energy and economic performance of RECs. The method is tested on a real case study in Northern Italy, where various configurations of RECs, including diverse prosumer-consumer ratios and production-consumption balances, are explored and assessed. Findings from the analysed case study indicate that balancing user profiles and allocating additional PV capacity to a shared generator can improve energy sharing and economic returns compared with the other scenarios examined. Because the workflow relies on readily available data and standard spreadsheet tools, it can be replicated by other small communities seeking data-light, early-stage feasibility support, enhancing the relevance and innovation of the tool. In the case study, the best-performing configuration (community-scale PV plus three small commercial users) increases annual REC revenues up to 8010 €/y and the profitability intensity to 32.2 €/MWh, i.e., a 32% improvement over the baseline.