An energy community implementation: The unical energy cloud

Abstract

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, limiting the effects of climate change and decreasing the environmental, social and economic costs of energy production are some of the main issues related to the sustainable development of modern society. Energy communities, envisioned to enable local energy exchange between consumers and producers of renewable energy, represent a possible scenario towards a cleaner and sustainable energy system. In this paper, an energy community management model called Power Cloud and presented in previous papers is proposed for a real-world practical application at the University of Calabria. In particular, the implementation of the information and communication technology (ICT) architecture and other enabling technologies, such as the nanogrid and the smart energy box, are discussed in detail. The experiment results show that by adopting the Power Cloud management model it is possible to obtain significant savings in terms of energy cost, which provide benefit for a community, such as a university campus.