Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) consist in organized entities gathering consumers and prosumers connected to the public electricity distribution network, who are allowed to exchange energy locally, without resorting to the traditional wholesale market structure. They aim at fostering local private investment in renewable energy production and at mobilizing flexibility available in distribution networks to improve the selfconsumption and the self-sufficiency of the members. Citizens are interested in RECs since they can reap financial, ecological and social benefits through the mutualization of resources and the coordinated investment in energy resources. The massive roll-out of RECs on the electricity distribution grids entails impacts of various natures, i.e. technical, economical, regulatory as well as legal, which still need to be correctly quantified. Different time horizons must be considered for favouring the uptake of RECs. The day-ahead scheduling operates the existing community energy assets while mutualizing resources in the community to minimize the community objective. However, the day-ahead schedules face real-time deviations that must be accounted in the final energy bills of REC members, via the settlement problem. Finally, the optimal sizing and investment in local energy resources must be coupled with short-term models in order to better reflect operational costs. The goal of this project is to propose optimization-based models and methods embracing all time-horizons (from long-term investment to intraday settlement) for the organization of renewable energy communities. The two main objectives are:

1) Develop innovative investment models for the optimal sizing of energy assets in RECs, able to account for the new financing mechanisms which will appear in communities.

2) Develop innovative energy exchange settlement methods and models to account for the real-time deviations of the energy assets usage from their optimal day-ahead schedule.