Energy Communities (ECos), characterized by end-users in close geographical proximity that have electrical and/or thermal demand, along with individual/shared renewable energy resources and storage technologies, efficiently integrate distributed energy resources by promoting ECo self-consumption. ECos can potentially offer i) environmental benefits in the form of reduced carbon footprint, ii) social benefit in terms of increased end-user participation, iii) economic benefits due to the reduction in distribution and transmission cost and grid losses. However, ensuring stable and reliable ECo operations (internal and external) calls for developing a synergic combination of ICT-integrated control and optimization algorithms that adhere to regulations, end-user preferences, ECo operational constraints and requirements related to external interactions.
To address these issues, ECODREAM’s objectives are threefold: (i) formalizing new models specific to the ECo design and functioning; (ii) designing distributed algorithms and software toolboxes capable of generating local-level control policies with global optimality and safety guarantees; and (iii) testing algorithm performance and scalability through extensive large-scale simulations and on a real ECo test-bed.
