New Energy Communities
Project Overview
Challenges
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About
Energy communities are grassroots initiatives enabling citizens to collaboratively invest in and manage energy resources, playing a proactive role in the energy transition. However, they face regulatory ambiguity and economic viability concerns, raising questions about their feasibility and impact on the broader energy system. To address these challenges, New Energy Communities created a versatile tool that aids in designing and operating energy communities, considering various factors like market participation, stakeholder involvement, and regulatory frameworks. This tool is adaptable for diverse projects, from deploying urban community batteries to tackling energy access for areas prone to bushfires. It helps individuals establish economically viable and sustainable energy communities, while also evaluating the impact of regulatory changes and offering a model that can be adapted to multiple geographies.
Team
Carmen Bas Domenech
University of Melbourne
I am an electrical engineer who developed a tool during my PhD at the University of Melbourne to support the establishment of energy communities. Communities are diverse, and the path towards successful energy communities, providing value to consumers and the wider electrical grid, is not straightforward. With this tool we can support energy communities, from technologies and services to the stakeholders and regulatory framework adopted. This tool was used to establish energy communities in the City of Melbourne and regional Australia. Now, I am working as an engineer with Energy Australia to provide solutions that empower customers.
Prof. Pierluigi Mancarella
University of Melbourne
Pierluigi Mancarella is Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Professor of Smart Energy Systems at the University of Manchester, UK. His key research interests include techno-economic modelling and analysis of multi-energy systems, grid integration of renewables and distributed energy resources, energy infrastructure planning under uncertainty, and security, reliability, and resilience of low-carbon networks.
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