Towards resilient energy communities: Evaluating the impact of economic and technical optimization

This paper assesses the difference of optimal operation of energy communities (ECs) with respect to economic and technical goals. ECs have emerged as a promising solution for accelerating the transition to more sustainable energy systems and therefore climate change mitigation. While cost optimization (economic goal) is most commonly used in ECs, optimizing their resilience (technical goal) can be an important part of operating a distribution grid with high photovoltaic (PV) and electrical vehicle (EV) penetration in the future. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the impact of those two objective functions on overall EC costs as well as individual member costs. The findings highlight the trade-off between the flexibility measures required for a resilient EC and the cost associated with them. This study helps quantify the subsidies that would be required to incentives EC to operate in a resilient matter as a form of grid service.