Energy communities: neighborhood resistance to electricity to save 30% on the bill

El Realengo is a district of Crevillente (Alicante) that has

and 65 homes registered. All of them will pay on their November electricity bill between 20 and 30% less. The reason is that they are part of an energy community or, in other words, they have gone from being only consumers to producers and managers of their own electricity. That is the concept of a figure that proliferates in Europe and that has arrived with force in Spain where, according to the

an energy community is an entity formed by partners (neighbors, SMEs or even town halls) "based on open, voluntary, autonomous and controlled participation by the partners located in the vicinity of their own renewable energy projects".

In Europe there are 1,800 self-consumption communities registered in Germany, 700 in Denmark and 500 in the Netherlands.

In Spain there are already

a third of which are in the Valencian Community, although national legislation has not yet been developed to protect them beyond the European Directives on Renewable Energy and Electricity Markets.

The community can be formed promoted by a city council, by neighborhood communities or even by companies in the same industrial area.

The only limit is that the collective self-consumption facilities are located within a

The estimated savings ranges between 20 and 40% because the electricity distribution networks are not used, which reduces costs and taxes, and during the day the energy that is produced is consumed. At night, the option is to use the kilowatts that have been stored in batteries. Due to their high cost, there are communities that choose to install them and others that go online. Although the majority of communities size their photovoltaic installations for their consumption, surpluses can be produced with which the needs of families in the municipality in a situation of energy poverty are covered or they are sold to third parties.

The Crevillente energy community is called

, it is the first cell for collective self-consumption. It is promoted by the City Council itself and the Enercoop Group, whose origin is the Cooperativa Eléctrica Benéfica San Francisco de Asís, which was born in 1925 to create a distribution network that would supply the textile sector for the production of carpets when companies did not see it profitable to carry the light to a town that today has 30,000 inhabitants, 95% cooperative members. Like Enercoop, it is a distributor and marketer, but also a generator of 30% of the energy that the municipality needs, through its photovoltaic and hydraulic installations. The light there is cheaper.

In El Realengo they have taken another step. In a municipal plot where sports and recreation facilities have been located, they have installed a 600 square meter roof of solar panels with the capacity to generate 180,000 kWh per year, which will cover 50% of the energy needs of the district. In addition, Comptem is part of an experimental project that combines collective self-consumption technology with medium-scale energy storage, the Merlon project, which has a contribution of 300,000 euros of the 400,000 investment made. The rest of the cost is covered by the cooperative members, allocating a percentage of the discount they receive on their invoice to the amortization of the infrastructure. In other cases, such as the community promoted by the Abenójar City Council (Ciudad Real) and RenoWa,A fee of five euros is paid to become a member and receive savings that they estimate will be around 40%.

The idea of ​​Enercoop is to be able to launch three new communities before the end of 2021, with the use of public (schools, medical offices, municipal offices ...) or private roofs, weaving "bee panels" with the aim that in 2030

explain from the cooperative.

Saving the bill is not just a concern of families.

Especially serious is the rise in electricity prices for industries, which are also beginning to explore the benefits of energy communities.

The

and the

, both based in Gandía (Valencia) have set up the Polígono Alcodar Energy Community, one of the first initiatives in Spain to implement this model of collective self-consumption of renewable energies in an industrial area. The objective is to design a global strategy for the entire industrial area, which includes more than 200 companies, with the participation of all those who wish to do so. Altogether, it is planned to reach an installed power of 8.8 MW, which is the largest project of its kind currently underway in Spain.

For this, they have the participation of

Valencian cooperative expert in this model of collective self-consumption, which has already promoted five projects of energy communities in municipalities of the province of Valencia, which maintains another six in process and advises to the consistories that want to promote them.

One of their collaborations goes beyond urban supply needs.

As in the case of industrial estates, Sapiens Energía has gone one step further and together with Transición Energética Solar (Tranesol) are promoting the figure of the Agrovoltaica or Agro-photovoltaic Renewable Energy Community, a model that allows cultivation or livestock exploitation to be compatible with the implementation of a renewable energy generation plant.

The first project, Picassent Solar, which will be built at the end of 2021, is to recover the land of a pig farm that had not worked for 40 years to install 11,000 square meters of plates in height, with up to 4 meters in height in some areas, so that tropical fruits can be planted under them. This installation will supply farmers and some 500 users -homes and SMEs- who are within a coverage radius of 50 kilometers from the installation, in addition, a cut of 1,920 tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere will be achieved.

These investments in the Valencian Community, which have multiplied by seven in just one year, have been possible thanks to the aid promoted by the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (IVACE) that reaches two million euros and will receive a new boost with European funds.

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