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Renewable energy communities (RECs) are prominent initiatives to provide end consumers an active role in the energy sector, raise awareness on the importance of renewable energy (RE) technologies and increase their share in the energy system thus reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The economic viability of RECs though, depends on multiple interdependent factors that require careful examination for each individual context. This study aims at investigating the impact of electricity tariffs, ratio of electrification of heating and transportation sectors, prices of RE technologies and storage systems, and internal electricity exchange prices on the annual cost for electricity provision of a REC and its GHG emissions. A mixed-integer linear model is developed to minimize energy provision costs for a representative REC in Flanders, Belgium. The results indicate that RECs have the potential to reduce these costs by 10 to 26% and emissions by 5 to 13% compared to business-as-usual. The cost reduction depends on the type of electricity tariffs and the level of uptake of flexible assets such as heat pumps and electric vehicles. The shift towards a higher power component in the electricity tariff makes electricity storage systems more attractive, which leads to higher electricity self-consumption. The introduction of flexible assets adds the possibility to shift demand when tariffs are lower and makes higher installed capacities of photovoltaic systems economically viable due to the increase in the total electricity demand. However, RECs cost reduction compared to individual smart-homes amounts to only 4%–6% in the best cases. Uncertainties stemming from the costs of setting up a REC may reduce the estimated benefits. • First evaluation of economic viability or renewable energy communities in Flanders. • A multi-energy mixed-integer linear model is used to find the cost-optimal solution. • Electricity tariffs and uptake of flexible assets are the most influential factors. • Communities can achieve a cost-reduction up to 26% against business-as-usual cases. • Only 4%–6% cost-reduction when compared against individual prosumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU aims to become the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050. In order to meet this target, the integration of high shares of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) in the energy system is of primary importance. Nevertheless, the large deployment of variable renewable sources such as wind and photovoltaic power will pose important challenges in terms of power management. For this reason, increasing the system flexibility will be crucial to ensure the security of supply in future power systems. This work investigates the flexibility potential obtainable from the diffusion of Demand Response (DR) programmes applied to residential heating for different renewables penetration and power system configuration scenarios. To that end, a bottom-up model for residential heat demand and flexible electric heating systems (heat pumps and electric water heaters) is developed and directly integrated into Dispa-SET, an existing unit commitment optimal dispatch model of the power system. The integrated model is calibrated for the case of Belgium and different simulations are performed varying the penetration and type of residential heating technologies, installed renewables capacity and capacity mix. Results show that, at country level, operational cost could be reduced up to €35 million and curtailment up to 1 TWh per year with 1 million flexible electric heating systems installed. These benefits are significantly reduced when nuclear power plants (non-flexible) are replaced by gas-fired units (flexible) and grow when more renewable capacity is added. Moreover, when the number of flexible heating systems increases, a saturation effect of the flexibility is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]