What are energy communities and how to set one up?
Society is becoming increasingly aware of the need for renewable energy, as well as the importance of caring for the environment and combating the climate emergency situation we are currently experiencing.
In this context, you may have heard about energy communities. Do you know what they are? If the answer is no and you want to discover what they are and how they are formed, keep reading!
What are energy communities?
Energy communities are legal entities formed by citizens, administrators, or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with the aim of generating, using, and locally managing their own energy. Thus, in order to achieve their goal, they also pursue energy savings and energy efficiency.
To fulfill their purpose, each energy community carries out different types of activities, among which we can find the following:
- Generation of energy from renewable sources: They produce energy under a shared self-consumption model and with various collective generation plants.
- Distribution, management, supply, aggregation, and storage of energy: In order to have an infrastructure that allows the proper functioning of an energy community, issues such as how to distribute, store, and provide energy must be resolved.
- Energy efficiency services: Energy communities need advisory services so that both residents, local businesses, and industry can reduce their energy consumption and bills.
Although we can find more activities and even divide the ones we have already mentioned further, this is already a good representative sample to understand what actions such an entity must carry out.
Now that we know what it consists of, how does it work? Keep reading the next section if you want to know more!
How are energy communities formed?
First of all, remember what we said at the beginning of this post, an energy community is born from the creation of a legal entity. This means that there must exist either a cooperative entity, a limited company, or a community of property, among other different types of legal entities that we can find.
Starting from this, the next thing a community energy project needs for its operation is the drafting of the project for its implementation. At the same time, this requires a professional or specialized company for this type of tasks. This is of vital importance since, depending on the type of technologies to be used, different needs may arise, which must be met to successfully fulfill the purpose for which these communities are created.
In this context, at Vallcorba Enginyers, we can offer our services as we are a multidisciplinary team made up of engineers and architects that allow us to cover this type of technical project and accompany you throughout the process.
With the help of a company like Vallcorba Enginyers, this type of installation can be carried out without any problem, and once the technical project is approved, the community partners can take care of the contracting of the necessary infrastructure to carry out energy production and its corresponding management.
That’s it for today’s article! We hope you now have a clear understanding of what a community energy project is and how they are created or formed. If you are interested in creating one, do not hesitate to contact us!
