Tangible Overall Economic Benefits with Decentralised Virtual Energy Communities

Energy communities offer their members the opportunity to make more advanced use of decentralised energy production in the existing electricity distribution system. This paper explores the benefits of the energy community from the perspective of savings attributed to reduced transmission losses in the distribution grid. Consumption data and simulated photovoltaic production, gathered from the farms, have been utilised in the calculations. Two individual topologies are tested: one featuring distributed production and the other with centralised production at the centre of the distribution network from a community's perspective. The aim of the study is to demonstrate that the benefits of an energy community are not just a transfer of revenue from the distribution system operators to the members of the energy community but lead to concrete overall economic benefits. The results indicate that both topologies have a minor loss-reducing effect. Of these two options, distributed production appears as a better implementation option in term of losses.