The rise and transformative impacts of community-driven smart grid experiments: The case of the community-based Virtual Power Plant

Description

The energy system needs to be transformed to reduce carbon emissions and prevent catastrophic impacts of climate change. ‘Smart Grids’ and ‘Community Energy’ are perceived as two important drivers of this transformation, often referred to as the energy transition. The electricity grid is becoming increasingly ‘smart’ due to the introduction of digital technologies that enable coordination of distributed energy resources (DER) (e.g. distributed generation, energy storage, and controllable appliances). Community energy refers to community-driven initiatives involved in energy generation and conservation projects. Currently, energy communities are increasingly entering the field of smart grids to experiment with community-based models of energy generation, distribution, and management. An example is the community-based Virtual Power Plant (cVPP) project, in which energy communities from Flanders (Belgium), Ireland, and the Netherlands set up their own cVPP experiment.

The combination of elements from both community energy and smart grids makes cVPP a promising yet unexplored radical innovation. However, these emerging community-driven smart grid experiments face severe challenges to survive, let alone play a significant role in the ongoing energy transition. This research drew on the field of Sustainability Transitions to better understand how such community-driven smart grid experiments can scale up from the niche to regime-level and contribute to the sustainable transformation of the energy system.

However, cVPP is only just emerging and is not well understood nor conceptualised. Better understanding is needed of what a cVPP is and how cVPP experiments can be replicated in different contexts, which is crucial for successful upscaling and niche development. Next, smart grids promise to empower citizens and communities, it, however, remains unclear how they could enhance the agency of energy communities. Finally, more nuanced theoretical perspectives are needed to grasp the complexities of real-life niche strategies.

This thesis addressed these issues and research gap by exploring how community-driven smart grid experiments can scale up and have wider transformative impacts. Qualitative and action research approaches allowed for simultaneously investigating and supporting energy communities involved in (the replication of) smart grid experiments.

This research revealed promising niche hybridisation strategies that involve aggregation of multiple energy communities in an overarching cVPP to better fit in the centralized energy system, while also strengthening the community energy sector and enable many energy communities to manage and trade energy. Aggregation of DER requires an energy management system (EMS). The extent to which this digital technology can enhance the agency of energy communities depends on choices made regarding the DER portfolio, control architecture, roles played in the energy system, and openness of the software. An (open-source) EMS can function as a shared resource for the whole community energy sector, which can ease replication and growth of community-driven smart grid experiments. As such, aggregation and shared use of an EMS can facilitate the upscaling of the cVPP experiments and emergence of a promising cVPP niche, which might have an important role to play in the energy transition.

Period	2 Oct 2024
Event title	Digitalisation of energy communities: New modes of organising, business models and transition governance
Event type	Workshop
Location	Dipoli, FinlandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International