Performance Optimization of Renewable Energy Communities: The Case Study of Nearby Towns Around Parma, Italy

The load matching between electricity demand and energy production plays a crucial role in the design and operation of energy communities. To optimize the performance of renewable energy communities (RECs), it is important to accurately size the generation systems and select members with diverse load profiles. In this work, the performance of a REC in Northern Italy is optimized. The case study was selected by considering that in a nearby town around Parma (i.e., the municipality of Sorbolo-Mezzani), there is a large industrial facility that generates a large surplus of electricity. Based on the map of the electrical primary substation and on the load profile of the industrial facility, commercial, school, residential and industrial buildings were included within the REC. In particular, commercial buildings were included due to their extended operational hours, particularly during weekends when industrial facilities are typically inactive, while the industrial building was selected based on its high-energy demand profile. Several scenarios are investigated by changing the mix of the members involved in the energy community. To evaluate the performance of each scenario, a model in MATLAB environment was developed. The model accounts for the load profiles and the energy production of the photovoltaic systems. Copyright: ©2025 The authors. This article is published by IIETA and is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).