The concepts of Renewable Energy Community (REC) or Local Energy Community (LEC) have been introduced by the European Commission through its Renewable Energy Directive for the promotion of energy from renewable sources (Directive 2018/2001 RED II), with three objectives:

1. Allow the citizen to play an active and central role in the electricity supply chain.

2. Creating a local stable economic framework which stimulates investment in local renewable generation and storage assets.

3. Unlock Low Voltage/Medium Voltage flexibility provision.

Since then, the Directive has been transposed in regional/national decrees, legal frameworks, etc. in EU member states, for instance in Wallonia (Belgium), with a decree first published in 2019, reviewed in 2022 and a government edict in March 2023. One of the current trends consists in considering other energy vectors such as heat/cold in Local Energy Communities, beyond electricity only, and even in including mobility services in the local economy.

This PhD aims at proposing appropriate Market Designs for such multi-sector Local Energy Communities. It is funded by the EFES project (Enhanced Flexibility in Energy Systems) in the framework of the Win4Excellence (call 2023).

More specifically, two axes are investigated in the PhD work:

Axis 1 - Internal Market Design for multi-sector energy communities

This axis focuses on the development of energy exchange and pricing mechanisms within LECs which encourage long-term membership, based on models and tools from the field of cooperative game theory. This first axis aims therefore at proposing an internal market design for LECs which ensures fairness, favours the stability of the LEC membership, hence investment in energy equipment, and is in line with the electrification of mobility and heating systems.

Axis 2 – Interactions with external entities such as network operators and wholesale market actors

This axis aims to model the impact of LEC deployment on non-LEC system actors, and to propose interaction mechanisms which maximise benefits at the societal level. In particular, the focus is made on Electricity distribution and transmission system operators, and wholesale market actors.