Design of a local energy community in the Hauts-Sarts industrial park

Abstract

This study focuses on the design of an energy community in the Hauts-Sarts business park. The current assets in the potential community are 1150 kWp of PV panels, for a total consumption of 22 GWh per year. The main objectives of the community are to offer savings on the energy bill of its members, increase the integration of renewable energy sources into the grid and reduce the CO2 emissions of the community. The design is centered around two main aspects: an internal market model and an optimal sizing model. The internal market model is formulated as a MILP optimization model maximizing the annual profit realized by entities trading in the community and in the wholesale market. The price in the community can be fixed to incentivize investments, or dynamic to redistribute the gains of the community. Two optimization models returning the sizing maximizing the NPV of the community are also developed: one is a MILP optimization problem, returning the exact solution to the problem, and the other is a greedy method returning an optimized realistic sequence of investments in the community. The greedy method leads to a slightly lower PV sizing than the MILP model. The study showed that between 2000 kWp and 3000 kWp of additional PV panels as well as a 2200 kWp wind turbine have to be installed to maximize the NPV of the community, depending on the organizational choices of the community. In general, these choices consist in a trade-off between a fair redistribution of the savings of the community and incentives to increase the production capacity. The fixed costs associated with the operation of the community may sometimes be a barrier for the smallest consumers, but overall the community was able to reduce its costs over 20 years by 20% by installing additional production capacity and operating in a community.