Integrated Community Energy Systems (ICES) are an emerging local energy system focusing on the collective use of distributed energy resources (DER). These socio-technical systems (STSs) have a high potential to advance the transition towards socially inclusive, environmentally-friendly energy systems and to stimulate the local economy. While there is an analogy between energy in ICES and other common goods such as natural resources, it is not clear to what extent the existing theoretical framework for Socio-ecological Systems (SES) on the commons accounts for the specificities of common resources in ICESs and other STSs. This research explores the applicability of the SES framework to energy commons that are firmly embedded in STS with reference to the DE Ramplaan ICES in the Netherlands. The formation process and governance characteristics of this ICES are revised, further aided by stakeholder interviews. A framework and a strategic plan that can be used to design and implement an ICES are proposed.

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In order to decarbonize the energy sector, there is a widespread consensus that the role of end-users in the energy system should change from passive consumption to active prosumption and engagement. This is of particular importance as an increasing number of technologies and business models are focusing on the end-users. These developments provide new opportunities for further technical and social innovation to smarter, flexible and integrated systems such as community energy systems (CESs). Through system integration and community engagement CESs assist in transition to a low-carbon energy system. Despite the high importance, there is limited knowledge on willingness of local citizens to participate in the local energy systems such as CESs as well as associated factors determining such willingness. Through a survey among 599 citizens in the Netherlands, this research analyses the impact of demographic, socio-economic, socio-institutional as well as environmental factors on willingness to participate in CESs. Factor and multi-variate regression analysis reveals that the environmental concern, renewables acceptance, energy independence, community trust, community resistance, education, energy related education and awareness about local energy initiatives are the most important factors in determining the citizens’ willingness to participate in CESs. Citizens should be empowered to take active role in steering the local energy initiatives.

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Energy systems across the globe are going through a radical transformation as a result of technological and institutional changes, depletion of fossil fuel resources, and climate change issues. Accordingly, local energy initiatives are emerging and increasing number of the business models are focusing on the end-users. In this context, Integrated community energy systems (ICESs) are emerging as a modern development to reorganize local energy systems allowing simultaneous integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and engagement of local communities. With the emergence of ICESs new roles and responsibilities as well as interactions and dynamics are expected in the energy system. With this background, this thesis aims to understand the ways in which ICESs can contribute to enhancing the energy transition. This thesis utilizes a conceptual framework consisting of four institutional and three societal levels in order to understand the interaction and dynamics of ICESs implementation. Current energy trends and the associated technological, socio-economic, environmental and institutional issues are reviewed. The developed ICES model performs optimal planning and operation of ICESs and assesses their performance based on economic and environmental metrics. This thesis demonstrates the added value of ICESs to the individual households, local communities, and the society. As the added value of ICESs is impacted by the institutional settings internal and external to the system, a comprehensive institutional design considering techno-economic and institutional perspectives is necessary to ensure effective contribution of ICESs in the energy transition. @en

Integrated community energy systems (ICESs) are emerging as a modern development to re-organize local energy systems allowing simultaneous integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and engagement of local communities. Although local energy initiatives, such as ICESs are rapidly emerging due to community objectives, such as cost and emission reductions as well as resiliency, assessment and evaluation are still lacking on the value that these systems can provide both to the local communities as well as to the whole energy system. In this paper, we present a model-based framework to assess the value of ICESs for the local communities. The distributed energy resources-consumer adoption model (DER-CAM) based ICES model is used to assess the value of an ICES in the Netherlands. For the considered community size and local conditions, grid-connected ICESs are already beneficial to the alternative of solely being supplied from the grid both in terms of total energy costs and CO2 emissions, whereas grid-defected systems, although performing very well in terms of CO2 emission reduction, are still rather expensive.@en

The growing penetration of distributed energy resources is opening up opportunities for local energy management (LEM) – the coordination of decentralized energy supply, storage, transport, conversion and consumption within a given geographical area. Because European electricity market liberalization concentrates competition at the wholesale level, local energy management at the distribution level is likely to impose new roles and responsibilities on existing and/or new actors. This paper provides insights into the appropriateness of organizational models for flexibility management to guarantee retail competition and feasibility for upscaling. By means of a new analytical framework three projects in the Netherlands and one in Germany have been analysed. Both the local aggregator and dynamic pricing projects present potentials for retail competition and feasibility of upscaling in Europe.@en

Integrated Community Energy Systems (ICESs) are emerging as a modern development to re-organize the local energy systems allowing integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and engagement of local communities. Although local energy initiatives such as ICESs are rapidly emerging, assessment and evaluation are still lacking on the value these systems can provide both to the local communities as well as to the whole energy system. In this paper, we present a framework to assess the value of ICESs for local communities. We apply this framework to assess the value of ICES in Spain. For a block of 10 households, investments and operations of DERs together with local exchange is simulated in DER-CAM model. For the considered community size and local conditions, ICESs are beneficial to the alternative of solely being supplied from the grid. An ICES that gets remunerated the excess energy to the grid has higher benefits than the system where energy exports are not remunerated as currently in Spain.

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