IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v394y2025ics0306261925008360.html

Scenario analysis for renewable energy communities through advanced co-simulation infrastructure

Author

Listed:
  • Brandi, Silvio
  • Rando Mazzarino, Pietro
  • Schiera, Daniele Salvatore
  • Bilardo, Matteo
  • Barbierato, Luca
  • Bottaccioli, Lorenzo
  • Patti, Edoardo
  • Capozzoli, Alfonso

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive scenario analysis for a Renewable Energy Community (REC) located in a mountain area, with the aim to emphasize the interplay between building envelope performance, heating system technologies, and the penetration of PV systems. Motivated by the urgent need to transition towards sustainable energy systems, the study explores and validates the efficacy of a co-simulation infrastructure in assessing the performance of RECs by means of grid and building-level KPIs. The methodology integrates an advanced co-simulation tool to model and assess the impacts of various REC scenarios on the energy shared by the community, effectively capturing the patterns of energy production and consumption. The tool leverages a heterogeneous but limited set of input data to obtain a realistic representation of the specific REC. The major findings reveal significant insights into how the synergy between building envelope design, heating system options, and PV system penetration can enhance RECs’ sustainability and energy efficiency. Conclusions drawn from the study underscore the crucial role of advanced simulation approaches in guiding decision-making processes for the development and optimization of RECs, thanks to the deeper understanding of the complex factors that drive community performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Brandi, Silvio & Rando Mazzarino, Pietro & Schiera, Daniele Salvatore & Bilardo, Matteo & Barbierato, Luca & Bottaccioli, Lorenzo & Patti, Edoardo & Capozzoli, Alfonso, 2025. "Scenario analysis for renewable energy communities through advanced co-simulation infrastructure," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 394(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:394:y:2025:i:c:s0306261925008360
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.126106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261925008360
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.126106?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ableitner, Liliane & Tiefenbeck, Verena & Meeuw, Arne & Wörner, Anselma & Fleisch, Elgar & Wortmann, Felix, 2020. "User behavior in a real-world peer-to-peer electricity market," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 270(C).
    2. Arnaudo, Monica & Topel, Monika & Puerto, Pablo & Widl, Edmund & Laumert, Björn, 2019. "Heat demand peak shaving in urban integrated energy systems by demand side management - A techno-economic and environmental approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    3. Ateyah Alzahrani & Ioan Petri & Yacine Rezgui & Ali Ghoroghi, 2020. "Developing Smart Energy Communities around Fishery Ports: Toward Zero-Carbon Fishery Ports," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-22, June.
    4. Blonsky, Michael & Maguire, Jeff & McKenna, Killian & Cutler, Dylan & Balamurugan, Sivasathya Pradha & Jin, Xin, 2021. "OCHRE: The Object-oriented, Controllable, High-resolution Residential Energy Model for Dynamic Integration Studies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).
    5. Ferdowsi, Farzad & Mehraeen, Shahab & Upton, Gregory B., 2020. "Assessing distribution network sensitivity to voltage rise and flicker under high penetration of behind-the-meter solar," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 1227-1240.
    6. Tanushree Charan & Christopher Mackey & Ali Irani & Ben Polly & Stephen Ray & Katherine Fleming & Rawad El Kontar & Nathan Moore & Tarek Elgindy & Dylan Cutler & Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari & David , 2021. "Integration of Open-Source URBANopt and Dragonfly Energy Modeling Capabilities into Practitioner Workflows for District-Scale Planning and Design," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-28, September.
    7. Jin, Xin & Baker, Kyri & Christensen, Dane & Isley, Steven, 2017. "Foresee: A user-centric home energy management system for energy efficiency and demand response," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 1583-1595.
    8. Mukherjee, Monish & Hardy, Trevor & Fuller, Jason C. & Bose, Anjan, 2022. "Implementing multi-settlement decentralized electricity market design for transactive communities with imperfect communication," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PA).
    9. Evan S. Jones & Rosemary E. Alden & Huangjie Gong & Dan M. Ionel, 2023. "Co-Simulation of Electric Power Distribution Systems and Buildings including Ultra-Fast HVAC Models and Optimal DER Control," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-20, June.
    10. Earle, Lieko & Maguire, Jeff & Munankarmi, Prateek & Roberts, David, 2023. "The impact of energy-efficiency upgrades and other distributed energy resources on a residential neighborhood-scale electrification retrofit," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 329(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Buonomano, Annamaria & Forzano, Cesare & Giuzio, Giovanni Francesco & Maka, Robert & Palombo, Adolfo & Russo, Giuseppe, 2026. "Optimising renewable energy community aggregation for urban districts decarbonisation," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 226(PD).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Earle, Lieko & Maguire, Jeff & Munankarmi, Prateek & Roberts, David, 2023. "The impact of energy-efficiency upgrades and other distributed energy resources on a residential neighborhood-scale electrification retrofit," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 329(C).
    2. Wang, Jing & Munankarmi, Prateek & Maguire, Jeff & Shi, Chengnan & Zuo, Wangda & Roberts, David & Jin, Xin, 2022. "Carbon emission responsive building control: A case study with an all-electric residential community in a cold climate," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 314(C).
    3. Dukovska, Irena & Slootweg, J.G. (Han) & Paterakis, Nikolaos G., 2023. "Introducing user preferences for peer-to-peer electricity trading through stochastic multi-objective optimization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 338(C).
    4. Blonsky, Michael & McKenna, Killian & Maguire, Jeff & Vincent, Tyrone, 2022. "Home energy management under realistic and uncertain conditions: A comparison of heuristic, deterministic, and stochastic control methods," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 325(C).
    5. Munankarmi, Prateek & Maguire, Jeff & Balamurugan, Sivasathya Pradha & Blonsky, Michael & Roberts, David & Jin, Xin, 2021. "Community-scale interaction of energy efficiency and demand flexibility in residential buildings," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 298(C).
    6. Johari, F. & Lindberg, O. & Ramadhani, U.H. & Shadram, F. & Munkhammar, J. & Widén, J., 2024. "Analysis of large-scale energy retrofit of residential buildings and their impact on the electricity grid using a validated UBEM," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 361(C).
    7. Jia, Kunqi & Guo, Ge & Xiao, Jucheng & Zhou, Huan & Wang, Zhihua & He, Guangyu, 2019. "Data compression approach for the home energy management system," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 247(C), pages 643-656.
    8. Gabriel Gomez-Ruiz & Reyes Sanchez-Herrera & Jose M. Andujar & Juan Luis Rubio Sanchez, 2024. "Simulation-Based Education Tool for Understanding Thermostatically Controlled Loads," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-24, January.
    9. Riccardo Fraboni & Gianluca Grazieschi & Simon Pezzutto & Benjamin Mitterrutzner & Eric Wilczynski, 2023. "Environmental Assessment of Residential Space Heating and Cooling Technologies in Europe: A Review of 11 European Member States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-22, February.
    10. Nizami, M.S.H. & Hossain, M.J. & Amin, B.M. Ruhul & Fernandez, Edstan, 2020. "A residential energy management system with bi-level optimization-based bidding strategy for day-ahead bi-directional electricity trading," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    11. Edmund Widl & Giorgio Agugiaro & Jan Peters-Anders, 2021. "Linking Semantic 3D City Models with Domain-Specific Simulation Tools for the Planning and Validation of Energy Applications at District Level," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-24, August.
    12. Arlt, Marie-Louise & Chassin, David & Rivetta, Claudio & Sweeney, James, 2024. "Impact of real-time pricing and residential load automation on distribution systems," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    13. Yan Lu & Bo Ning & Pengyun Geng & Yan Li & Jiajie Kong, 2025. "Research on the Current Status and Key Issues of China’s Green Electricity Trading Development," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(7), pages 1-21, March.
    14. Yamaguchi, Yohei & Shoda, Yuto & Yoshizawa, Shinya & Imai, Tatsuya & Perwez, Usama & Shimoda, Yoshiyuki & Hayashi, Yasuhiro, 2023. "Feasibility assessment of net zero-energy transformation of building stock using integrated synthetic population, building stock, and power distribution network framework," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    15. Danica Djurić Ilić, 2020. "Classification of Measures for Dealing with District Heating Load Variations—A Systematic Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-27, December.
    16. Lou, Siwei & Zhang, Dequan & Li, Danny H.W. & Huang, Yu, 2024. "Evaluating solar ramp rate correlations by simple radiation and wind measurements," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    17. Zheyuan Sun & Sara Tavakoli & Kaveh Khalilpour & Alexey Voinov & Jonathan Paul Marshall, 2024. "Barriers to Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading Networks: A Multi-Dimensional PESTLE Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(4), pages 1-23, February.
    18. Correa-Florez, Carlos Adrian & Michiorri, Andrea & Kariniotakis, Georges, 2018. "Robust optimization for day-ahead market participation of smart-home aggregators," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 229(C), pages 433-445.
    19. Julien Lancelot Michellod & Declan Kuch & Christian Winzer & Martin K. Patel & Selin Yilmaz, 2022. "Building Social License for Automated Demand-Side Management—Case Study Research in the Swiss Residential Sector," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(20), pages 1-25, October.
    20. Esmat, Ayman & de Vos, Martijn & Ghiassi-Farrokhfal, Yashar & Palensky, Peter & Epema, Dick, 2021. "A novel decentralized platform for peer-to-peer energy trading market with blockchain technology," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(PA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:394:y:2025:i:c:s0306261925008360. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.