Freeware Digital Platform for Designing Renewable Energy Communities in Italy: An Overview

Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) are an emerging policy instrument to support the installations of new renewable energy power plants. However, their design requires an appropriate technical and financial expertise, which are time-consuming and require trained personnel. For these reasons, digital platforms for REC design have been proposed to support decision-making, yet guidance on their trade-offs is still missing. This paper presents a systematic and comparative comparison of recent platforms to design RECs in an Italian context. The comparison is based on a list of evaluation criteria clustered into four categories input, output, optimization, and openness. The research reveals a consensus on the primary inputs and outputs required for REC design and highlights the absence of optimization methods and openness features across all platforms. The results suggest that future advancements in freeware digital platforms should focus on facilitating open access to data and methodologies, as well as the establishment of standardized data sets for comparison of results. Such an approach can yield several benefits, including the implementation of optimal planning methods for REC that are widely accepted and embraced.