Nowadays, there is a wide scientific consensus about the unsustainability of the current energy system and at the same time, social awareness about climate change and the IPCC’s goals is increasing in Europe. Amongst the different pathways towards them, one alternative is the radical transition to a democratic low-carbon energy system where the local scale has a key leading role. Under this scope, this research is framed within the mPOWER project, financed by the European Commission’s H2020 programme, which promotes collaboration among different European municipalities in order to boost the transition to a renewable-based participatory energy system. This paper presents the starting point of the mPOWER project, where the main energy features of 27 selected European municipalities are collected and analysed for the year 2016. An open public tender and selection process was carried out among European cities in order to choose the candidates to participate in mPOWER project. A view of this situation will be taken by the mPOWER project as a diagnostic baseline for the following steps: a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing process among these European municipalities, and subsequently, among a more extensive group. The first finding of the paper is that, even if those municipalities are trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, they are highly dependent on fossil fuels, even in cases where renewable energies have significant presence. Second, their energy consumption is logarithmically related to the human development index and gross domestic product but not to the size of the cities and their climate characteristics. Finally, despite the work that these cities are making towards energy transition in general and within the mPOWER project in particular, the paper shows a high difficulty mapping their energy systems. The lack of accurate and unified data by the municipalities is a sign of disempowerment at a local and public level in the energy sphere and makes difficult any strategy to advance towards a bottom-up energy transition. Among other goals, the mPOWER project aims to reveal these kinds of difficulties and help local authorities in managing their transition paths.

Achieving the ambitious targets set by Europe in its 2050 roadmap, moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources, while reducing carbon emissions, will require a radical change in Europe’s energy system. Much of the action that will enable this energy transition to be realised in a democratic way is at the local level. It is at this level that many of the decisions regarding the energy transition desired by European citizens will have to be taken. The methodology used in this study is based on data collection, literature review, data validation and analysis. A part of this analysis will also be taken by the mPower project as a diagnostic baseline. The first finding of this research work is that energy transition data availability at the local level is quite low. Second, the local authorities are experiencing difficulties in decarbonising their energy consumption. Finally, the factor with highest positive relationships with other energy transition variables is the number of people employed in the field of energy transition. The results suggest that in order to lead a participatory energy transition, the workforce specifically dedicated to energy transition is a key factor, clearly differentiating it from staff working on the general energy field.

Rural environments present different electrification needs compared with the urban industrial areas. Those particularities imply rethinking electrification strategies taking into consideration economical, social and environmental aspects. In that respect, renewable distributed generation linked with microgrids presents interesting features for remote or sparsely populated areas. This paper presents the environmental advantages of using renewable generation, and displays a comparative characterization of rural/urban loads, a discussion of the most extended microgrid topologies, a comparative of available storage techniques and a literature review of the main steps in the process of designing a new microgrid.

Rural Smart Grids enables the incorporation of distributed generation as while as the development of the rural communities. In this paper Smart Grid characteristics are presented and challenges of its integration in the network are analysed. Differential characteristics of Rural Smart Grids are summarized and areas that should be investigated to achieve their high scale implementation are pointed out.

Al comenzar la tercera década del siglo xxi nos hemos introducido como sociedades capitalistas e industriales en trayectorias de colapso ecosocial que hacen urgente avanzar hacia otro modelo energético. Es por ello más importante que nunca el pensar en cómo el debate en torno a la noción de democracia energética puede ayudarnos a pensar las necesarias transiciones por venir. Así, este artículo se plantea un objetivo doble. Por un lado, dar a conocer algunos de los conceptos, críticas y planteamientos teórico-prácticos del ámbito de la democracia energética que proponen que la energía, antes que una mercancía y un bien de intercambio comercial, es una necesidad de todo ser vivo y debería reconocerse como un derecho humano universal. Por otro, analizar diferentes realidades comunitarias, barriales, además de organizaciones, alianzas, etc., y sus prácticas energéticas alternativas como paradigma de sociedades democráticas, justas, igualitarias, autónomas y ecológicamente sostenibles. Iniciativas tanto del Norte global, en concreto Euskal Herria, como del Sur global, ejemplificado en el caso de Brasil. Entendemos que una investigación de fondo sobre esta cuestión debe ser al menos capaz de dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas de estudio: a) ¿Energía para qué y para quién? b) ¿Energía en qué mundo? c) ¿Cómo son las comunidades energéticas de nuestro entorno?

This work studies the impact of the photovoltaic installation in a rural village of the Pyrenean region of Spain. Based on real data of electricity consumption a PV generation system has been designed and its effect in the distribution power losses and the voltage profile are analysed. As a second step, a storage system has been added to the PV system and the optimal dimension of the hybrid system has been calculated in order to reduce the peak value of the demanded power.