THEMATIC AREA
Renewable Energy Community (REC) Afurada
What is an Energy Community?
An energy community is made up of a group of consumers who, through a shared installation, produce all or part of their own solar energy. These communities are based on the principle of fair access, democratising self-consumption, and their main objective is to provide their members with environmental, economic and social benefits.
Advantages of an energy community:
- Reduce the use of fossil fuels
- Reduce electricity expenses
- Reduce CO2 emissions
- Fight energy poverty
- The production and consumption don’t have to be in the same building/facility
PILOT
With the aim of implementing a Renewable Energy Community in the area, DST Solar has installed photovoltaic panels and energy storage and sharing systems in three emblematic buildings in Afurada: the Afurada Heritage Interpretive Centre; the Afurada de Baixo Primary School; and the Afurada Market.
Results so far (22/01/2023 until 09/02/2024)
Photovoltaic production: 26.8 MWh
Avoided CO2 emissions: 13112 Kg
Self-Consumption
The internal regulations for the Afurada Renewable Energy Community are currently being defined so that it can be registered with the competent authority, the DGEG – Directorate General for Energy and Geology.
Smart Energy Management System
Innovation Point has developed a web platform to manage the Afurada Renewable Energy Community.
Main features
- Allows differentiated access to information according to the type of user
- Support several management entities
- Provides telemetry data (consumption, production and storage)
- Short-term energy forecasting (consumption, production)
- Analyses data (load sharing ad enery efficiency)
- Supports various types of communities (Renewable Energy Communities, Collective Self-Consumption)
- Manages all community-related data
- Calculates community KPIs by time period (total energy production, self-consumed energy, CO2 emissions avoided, total energy exchanged between members)
- Generates energy sharing between members according to selected sharing method and coefficients
The platform is already collecting data and is currently being tested by users