Economic assessment of self-consumption and energy communities: Profit distribution insights from a real case study

The deployment of solar energy for self-consumption provides an opportunity to restructure energy systems by harnessing energy and allowing individuals to actively participate in the energy transition, resulting in more significant profits. This work compares the photovoltaic (PV) electricity production for residential prosumers under three scenarios, in which: (1) the PV systems are designed to supply the individual demands of each user optimally; (2) with the exact PV capacity of the first scenario, the users decide to form an energy community; and (3), the prosumers decide to consolidate as an energy community from the beginning, and the whole PV system is designed to cover the demand of all the users optimally. Results show that energy communities in general, and creating the community from zero in particular, are more cost-effective than when the prosumers invest and manage their own PV system individually. The paper also discusses the distribution of the additional profits considering four allocation strategies, with the sharing approach based on the optimal individual photovoltaic power capacity being the most advantageous for all prosumers of the community. Specifically, with this sharing strategy, all prosumers reduce their payback, all prosumers increase the Net Present Value of their investment, and all prosumers pay less than 50% of what they pay when they do not have a self-consumption installation.