Assessing the Benefits of Renewable Energy Communities: A Portuguese Case Study

The new European legislation regarding self-consumption from local renewable energy sources, and the following Portuguese transposition, define new structures to the self-consumption process, namely the Storage Installation and the Production Installation. It also brings the concept of Renewable Energy Community (REC), defining how it can be formed and how to manage its energy consumption and generation. Regarding this management, there is the possibility to share the generated energy locally, among REC members, by the application of sharing coefficients. This paper analyses the benefits introduced to a group of buildings, in terms of electricity costs, when they operate as a REC. Additionally, it analyses the impact of battery storage systems on renewable energy sources self-consumption, when the referred buildings operate individually or as a REC.