The four sites that have been selected are:
- A Renewable Energy Community of Valongo, Portugal, led by a public authority, and assessing the feasibility of a mixed energy community of public buildings and a social housing neighborhood.
- A local community in Municipality Ivančna Gorica, Slovenia, led by public authority, aiming to become an energy self-sufficient local community by 2030.
- An Energy Community in the Parc Vallès Circular, Spain, led by a public authority and assessing the feasibility of a mixed energy community comprising public and residential buildings.
- The DARS Hrušica Energy Community, Slovenia, led by a commercial motorway operator and assessing the feasibility of a mixed energy vectors community together with 3 other commercial entities in the vicinity.
The community initiators are hoping that with the help from the CREATORS partners they will better understand:
- The kind of agreement with which to govern their energy community
- The feasibility of including additional energy vectors such as thermal energy
- The potential to go beyond PV and storage systems towards hydropower, biomass and other co-generation facilities.
- The financing options available for such a community system
- The process for setting up and energy system from planning to full operations
- The potential and value of energy trading and other flexible energy management options
The ambition for these community energy systems is that they will:
- Lower energy bills compared to their current utility costs
- Increase the share of renewables within community energy production
- Produce cleaner energy with lower GHG emissions associated with production
- Combat energy poverty by providing cheap, reliable energy to local citizens
- Boost confidence in the financials of investing in community energy systems
- Decrease air pollution by replacing polluting non-renewable energy sources (non-RES) generation with RES.
The results from the pre-feasibility studies will be made available for community innovators in January 2023. As part of our development and promotion of the CES-as-a-service model, CREATORS will later publish a key learnings paper featuring interviews with community initiators. Public and private initiators looking to understand the path to CES deployment can sign up for the CREATORS newsletter to have first access to the insights.
CREATORS will open a second round of applications for fully-funded pre-feasibility studies on the 1st of November. The round will offer a further six energy communities access to a professional pre-feasibility study with no expense, bringing these communities one step closer to implementation.