The energy sector transition to more decentralized and renewable structures requires greater participation by local consumers, which may be enabled by innovative models such as the setup of renewable energy communities (RECs). To maximize the self-consumption of local renewable energy generated by assets normally connected to the low voltage distribution grid, these RECs typically involve jointly owned assets such as collective photovoltaic solar panels (CPVs) and collective energy storage systems (CESS). This work proposes a novel mathematical model for a REC, accounting for three distinct economic approaches to the redistribution of collective benefits among community members. The main objective of this study is to understand how the participation of community members in collective assets (CAs) can help increase the fairness and equity of RECs. An illustrative REC case comprising members with individual and collective ownership of the assets is used to assess the proposed economic approaches. Extracting several answers, among them that the most advantageous configuration comes from agents with quotas in the CESS and CPV. An important conclusion is that depending on the selected economic approach, the social welfare and agent’s revenue vary significantly. In any case, CESSs increase equity among REC members.

This paper presents a comprehensive study of the technical and economic benefits that a typical residential prosumer may experience when investing in a solar photovoltaic (PV) system with a battery energy storage system (BESS). To this end, a home energy management system has been designed to simulate the prosumer’s daily operation, considering a novel method for calculating battery degradation while minimizing its operating costs. In order to contribute to the regulatory review process of the distributed generation underway in Brazil, a set of PV+BESS configurations has been assessed under the current and future regulatory scenarios proposed for discussion by the Brazilian regulatory agency. Although the results demonstrate that the prosumer’s self-consumption rate may increase up to 14% with the BESS coupling in the PV system, the investment proved to be economically unattractive in the current regulatory scenario and practically unfeasible in any of the proposed future scenarios. To make PV+BESS systems economically feasible, some business models are proposed and discussed, and for example, provide subsidies for policymakers, financial agents, and battery manufacturers. A sensitivity analysis for each business model showing its economic feasibility spectrum is provided to assist the different sector players, especially the consumers, in their decision-making process.

Traditional models of power systems are undergoing a restructuring process, stimulated by the growing deployment of renewable energy sources, making them more decentralized and progressively increasing the focus on the consumer. New arrangements are being explored, allowing consumers to play a more active role in energy systems, highlighting the concept of consumer-centric markets. This work presents an optimization model that considers the insertion of the battery energy storage system (BESS) in the concept of community energy markets. This model aims to increase the community income and includes the degradation of BESS, also evaluating different arrangements of BESS in the community markets. In the investigated scenarios, discussions about the feasibility of inserting BESS through the analysis of social welfare (SW) and fairness indicators were carried out. With the results, it was possible to observe that there are structures that are more advantageous from the perspective of the communities and others from the perspective of the members of the communities, bringing some insights into the different impacts of a BESS in an energy community.

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