Economic modelling of residential energy communities, including thermal flexibilities: a business case for prosumers and grid operators?

With more volatile and decentralised supply and demand patterns, the energy transitions challenges existing electricity grid infrastructure. Demand side flexibility can be part of the solution with many novel concepts such as energy communities with local energy and flexibility sharing as market-based approaches under discussion recently. As the economic implications of such schemes are still unclear, this paper provides a model for quantifying the various revenue streams for consumers and prosumers and presents results from its application in a case study from a Swiss residential energy community. Especially, the paper features a novel approach towards modelling the flexibility from thermal building inertia through heat pumps, featuring dynamic building simulation and linear optimisation. The case study discussion puts a focus on how tariffing schemes can leverage increasing self-sufficiency and support the management of peak loads in local distribution grids. The results show generally low cost savings for the community members, but suggests that incentives towards collective self-consumption optimisation might be an economically efficient alternative to conventional peak power pricing.