Evaluation of a Renewable Energy Community for enhancing renewable energy use: An Italian case study

Renewable Energy Community (REC) offers a strategic opportunity to increase local renewable energy adoption and maximise energy self-consumption. This study evaluates the realisation of a REC within a municipality in the Marche region, Center of Italy, by analysing two different scenarios based on both Small-Medium Enterprise (SME) and residential energy consumption. The first scenario focuses on evaluating the size of a Photovoltaic (PV) system that maximises the energy self-consumption along with economic feed-in tariffs. The second scenario expands on this concept by integrating a second-life battery energy storage system (BESS), which allows excess energy to be stored for later use during peak demand hours, increasing the REC's virtual selfconsumption. In the PV-only installation scenario, the PV production covers 39.00% of on-site energy consumption, with 465.82 MWh of exports and 465.17 MWh of imports. Adding a 0.30 MWh-BESS, it increases the on-site energy self-consumption rate up to 50.00%, reduces exports by 21.35%, and imports by 17.26%. The BESS shifts 80.30 MWh of surplus PV to energy self-consumption. However, the introduction of a second-life BESS, economically speaking, is not cost-effective. To have a positive Net Present Value (NPV), the CAPital and EXpenditure (CAPEX) cost of the second-life BESS must be decreased to 75 €/kWh.