Not only supplying yourself with energy and using it efficiently, but also sharing it collectively in a networked form – this is the next stage in sustainable energy management. But what do such energy communities look like and how effective are they? You can find out this and more in this article.
On the one hand, customers are generally demanding more transparency from energy suppliers. On the other hand, more and more private households have found ways to generate their own electricity and share it with others. There is therefore a clear trend towards decentralized and digital energy supply and production. Energy communities are increasingly developing into an attractive business model. However, energy communities also require completely new skills and roles. What is involved here?
The roles in an energy community
There are basically three different roles within an energy community:
- The community member
- The community provider
- The community platform provider
What is the difference between a community provider and a community platform provider? The latter is defined as a separate technology platform that is able to serve both providers and members. Companies can use these platforms to handle a decentralized energy supply locally, form a network for prosumers and consumers and establish their own marketplace for additional services. Both business-to-business and business-to-business-to-consumer approaches can be pursued.
Community members are limited to prosumers or consumers, who have different capacities but can host decentralized, renewable systems themselves. Community providers, on the other hand, are much more diverse. Community providers can also include traditional energy suppliers, real estate companies, municipal administrations, OEMs and new players. In particular, the constantly changing market conditions, digitalization, new competition for new business models and the ongoing merging of industries are giving rise to such diversity.
Local energy participation thanks to energy communities
Energy communities can be used as a platform-based sharing economy model to promote local energy participation. In this way, local energy market structures can be created. To do this, however, providers must first localize the energy value chain – from energy generation, feed-in, transmission and distribution to balancing and billing.
Every energy community therefore requires an equally decentralized value chain that is already integrated into the basic structure of the energy supply system. Providers of energy community platforms should therefore have the following factors on their radar:
- The energy produced and consumed within a community differs from the energy supplied from outside the community
- With the help of local energy management systems, optimizations can be made within the community supply even before individual optimization of a prosumer is necessary
- All relevant energy flows can be billed within the Energy Community in addition to the usual grid supply
- All energy flows can be visualized and in some cases actively controlled – both for the community provider and the community member
In the entire energy supply and distribution sector, the energy community model is giving rise to new structures for efficient energy management, as well as the positioning and establishment of new services for energy suppliers. Suppliers and producers alike should therefore find out about these new market models now so that they can continue to supply municipalities, companies and private households with optimized energy flows and useful services in the future.
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About KENEXOS®
With Kreutzpointner Business Software GmbH (KBS for short), Kreutzpointner is setting a significant milestone in the technical development of the entire group of companies. Kreutzpointner Business Software GmbH focuses on the special requirements and digital needs of industrial customers with an independent business model. The operational launch took place in October 2020.
With KENEXOS®, KBS offers corporate customers an individually expandable application platform with its own software products and focuses on the implementation of industrial applications. KENEXOS® offers modern web technology for access via a wide range of end devices and enables integration with existing systems via an API interface. The standard modules include, for example, construction site documentation, task and ticket recording, plant management and maintenance and many more. The application platform is available for in-house installation (on-premise) or as a cloud solution (SaaS).
The ideas and the technical basis for Kreutzpointner Business Software GmbH have been successfully developed in recent years as part of the company-wide “Research & Development” process. In addition to the IT systems division, the new digital unit ideally rounds off Kreutzpointner’s large portfolio.
