27th International Conference on Electricity Distribution Rome, 12-15 June 2023 Paper n° 11080 CIRED 2023 1/5 TECHNICAL IMPACTS OF THE DEPLOYMENT OF RENEWABLE ENERGY COMMUNITIES ON ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION GRIDS Julien Allard1, Arnaud Rosseel1, Louise Sadoine2, Jamal Faraji1,Thomas Brihaye2, Filippo Capizzi3, Boniface Nteziyaremye4, François Bordes4, François Vallée1, Zacharie De Grève1 1UMons, Power Systems and Market Research Group, Mons, Belgium - julien.allard@umons.ac.be 2UMons, Effective Mathematics Department, Mons, Belgium – louise.sadoine@umons.ac.be 3Engie Laborelec, Linkebeek, Belgium – filippo.antonio.capizzi@gmail.com 4WeSmart, Bruxelles, Belgium – boniface@wesmart.com ABSTRACT Renewable Energy Communities have received considerable interest in recent years. Besides the economic, social and environmental benefits for end-users and society, their implementation on the electricity distribution network entails technical impacts which still need to be correctly understood.. In this work, we quantify these impacts on a community established on a LV domestic network subject to a European grid tariff structure, in which local generation surplus are shared among members. We first develop a collaborative demand- side management model to compute operational technical indices, such as community peak-to-average ratio, line losses, etc. We then develop an investment model to analyse the impact of communities on PV adoption in LV grids. We compare results with a benchmark in which members consume and invest individually. We show that community operation tends to reduce peak power and overall exchanges at the MV/LV substation, as well as overall line losses. The PV investment model proves that a community organization tends to favour the installation of more PV generation while controlling grid impacts, provided that a constraint on the SCR is imposed in the sizing model. INTRODUCTION Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) consist in organized entities gathering consumers and prosumers who are allowed to exchange energy locally, without resorting to the traditional wholesale/retail market structure. Promoted by the European Union (EU) in Directive 2018/2001 [1], they aim at fostering local private investment in renewable energy production, by placing the citizen at the centre of the electricity supply chain, and at mobilizing flexibility available in Low Voltage (LV) and Medium Voltage (MV) networks. The Directive is since being transposed into decrees and laws in the member states, so that more and more pilot projects and actual communities are currently emerging.(see e.g. [2], [3] for examples in Wallonia and Brussels respectively). Citizens are interested in RECs since they can reap financial, ecological and social benefits through the mutualization of resources and the joint investment in Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). However, the massive roll-out of RECs on the electricity distribution grids entails impacts of various natures, i.e. technical, economical, regulatory as well as legal, which still need to be correctly quantified. RECs have been intensively investigated in the literature, given the variety in terms of possible internal market designs. Short-term (operational) and long-term (investment and sizing of energy assets) economic impacts for REC members have been more particularly studied: authors in [4] investigated for instance energy bill savings, at the individual and community levels, brought by the REC. In another study [5], the added value of REC for investments in distributed generation has been quantified. Environmental concerns are often another major issue for energy community members: the influence of RECs operation on CO2 emissions is for example reported in [6]. Finally, the technical impacts that RECs may have on distribution grids has also attracted attention. In [7], grid indices (over- and undervoltage, line loading, etc.) are computed for a REC including photovoltaic and battery storage . However