Developing a regulatory framework for multiple participation in energy communities: Insights from Austria

For completing the energy transition, ordinary citizens have to be able to participate. This can be achieved with energy communities (ECs), which are getting implemented in EU member states. However, some of these legislations do not account for the possible challenges of implementing ECs. One example is Austrian law, which - in an attempt to take citizen involvement one step further - allows for simultaneous participation in multiple ECs. However, the law does not state how energy should be allocated among the members of these ECs, which opens the door to ambiguities that could lead to difficulties in energy allocation among ECs. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the study that closed this regulation gap by analyzing different methods of energy allocation in ECs with multiple participation. Four algorithms are developed and tested on solvability, complexity, comprehensibility, fairness and predictability. Only one algorithm has proven successful in all categories: the preference coefficient. Here, a preprocessing stage is included, in which each member must declare what percentage of consumption/generation goes to the multiple ECs in which they participate. Therefore, energy allocation in all ECs may be done in parallel without being dependent on the allocation results of other ECs. Based on the study presented this algorithm was implemented for the regulation of multiple participation in ECs in Austria.