General Considerations About Simulating Energy Communities

Collective action and citizen involvement in the energy sector represent the new platform upon which the novel energy communities are developed. From a scientific point of view, we consider modeling and simulation represent important instruments to shape the future energy communities and assess their impact on the society. In this context, this paper presents an initial conceptual analysis upon the most important requirements and challenges that can be expected in this new research direction, where human actors must be directly involved in the technical solution. We also propose a general model of an energy community, emphasizing the key entities and limitations, along with a concept for modeling the human behaviour. Furthermore, we consider several metrics for assessing the impact of the community with respect to the internally consumed energy.