Portugal
Pilot Description
While the regulatory framework for energy communities is still in progress, Portugal has a rich tradition of energy cooperatives, exemplified by CEVE and COOPERNICO. CEVE, serving over 9,000 consumers, faces the challenge of integrating downstream investments in RECs and collective RES self-consumption, optimizing grid self-consumption, and evolving its organizational model toward the CEC model. COOPERNICO, with 3700 στο call members, aims to engage citizens as active participants in the national energy market, establishing new business models that aggregate surplus PV self-consumption. The Portuguese pilot, leveraging CEVE and COOPERNICO's business models, platforms, and infrastructures, will demonstrate different community models, including collective RES self-consumption, REC, and LEC. The pilot involves 60 members from CEVE and 50 to 100 members from COOPERNICO, exploring various contexts and geographical scopes, demonstrating the impact of energy services on increasing energy resilience. Non-energy services related to maintenance and replacement of assets will be provided through Energy Data Cooperatives. The incorporation of e-mobility and charging infrastructure within energy communities, along with the analysis of RES surplus management, will be examined. ENPOWER will optimize balancing mechanisms, allocating shared energy among community participants to increase the use of local resources. P2P sharing of local RES electricity within communities will be explored, and assessments of community members' flexibility will inform targeted programs with consumer-specific incentives to increase participation in flexibility services.
- Local collective self-consumption with virtual community flexibility
- Over 100 members will be engaged, showcasing joint ownership models
- Over 2.1 MWp installed PV capacity
- Introducing a cost-effective IoT device, enabling real-time monitoring
