Why DSO involvement in energy community planning is expedient

The dissemination of distributed energy resources (DER) can entail diverse problems in the electrical grid. Energy communities (ECs) jointly invest in or operate DER for among others economic benefits through lower energy bills. The grid-friendly investment planning of ECs can potentially alleviate grid balancing in the operational stage. By exploring the more holistic cost of different EC planning strategies, we propose an alternative to the post-fitting of grid requirements to economically planned ECs. We find that grid-friendly EC planning has both positive effects on EC economy and grid efficiency.