Energy Security of Thermal Energy Communities

Energy Security of Thermal Energy Communities

Fouladvand, J. (TU Delft Energie and Industrie)

Herder, P.M. (promotor)
Ghorbani, Amineh (copromotor)
Mouter, N. (copromotor)

Delft University of Technology

2022-10-07

This thesis aims to support the design and implementation of energy-secure thermal energy communities (TEC) by investigating their technical, behavioural and institutional settings through a collective action perspective. The thesis shows that energy-secure TEC initiatives are collective energy systems with particular characteristics and surrounding conditions. The thesis demonstrates, by building and using a number of agent-based models, that behavioural and institutional settings are relatively more influential than technical settings for establishing and sustaining the functioning of energy-secure collective thermal energy systems. In particular, a combination of aquifer thermal energy storage with heat pumps positively impacted TEC initiatives' energy security. The most crucial technical requirement for the energy security of TEC initiatives is a connection to a natural gas grid. The thesis recommends that individual households initiate their own (thermal) energy communities, and policy-makers support such initiatives.

Energy security
Energy community
Institutional analysis
Collective action
Agent-based modeling (ABM)
Energy transition
Energy governance
Renewable energy systems
Thermal energy
Thermal energy community
Institutional analysis and development

https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:fe2d2e0c-8abd-4da1-bd75-c8926831b093

978-94-6366-606-0

Institutional Repository

doctoral thesis

© 2022 J. Fouladvand