Economic Incentive Fundamentals for the Operation of Energy Communities with Different Storage Concepts

The reasons why community energy storages (CES) are, despite technological maturity, yet not widespread in energy communities (ECs) are manifold, and encompass questionable economic viability, absence of tailored regulation, and missing transparent operational processes leading to a lack of social acceptance. This work aims to tackle the increased uptake of CES concepts by framing the economic incentive fundamentals for the operation of ECs with central community storage as well as stationary and mobile swarm storage. Thereby, non-strategic behaviour as well as strategic operation procedures are investigated. Our analysis shows that variable retail energy prices cause a range of situations with different economic incentives for individual EC entities (e.g. prosumers, consumers, CES). We learn that economic operation incentives do not necessarily align with system- or grid-friendly behaviour, and can even lead to ’unnatural’ behaviour of ECs, such as minimising self-consumption instead of maximising it. This shows the necessity to consider a much more complex incentive structure at the community level in the future, addressing both, the possibilities as well as drawbacks and gaps identified within this study. We conclude that a range of legislative amendments will be inevitable, both at EU and national level, to foster a basis for CES integration that aligns economic goals of ECs with the needs of the energy system and the electricity grid, and avoids contradictory or unnatural behavioural incentives.