Social acceptability and market of distributed storage systems for energy communities

This paper presents the results of an exploratory survey based on a multi-purpose questionnaire collecting data from 250 residential end-users who live in the southern regions of Italy. The survey aims to evaluate the level of knowledge about storage technologies and assess the social acceptability of energy communities and distributed storage systems for creating distributed energy storage communities. The survey is, conceptually, structured in three parts. The first part collects socio-demographic data and investigates preferences about the media that people know and use and propensity to participate in collective actions. The second part of the questionnaire focuses on examining the propensity toward storage technologies and people's perceptions, expectations and concerning to adopt storage systems. In the final part, the questionnaire examines people's knowledge and propensity to participate in energy communities. The data obtained from the survey were processed using the Statistical Package for Social Science software. Researchers and operators may use the survey's results as suggestions for improving the diffusion of distributed storage systems and increasing their potential market.