Energy Security of Thermal Energy Communities

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...

Analysing community-based initiatives for heating and cooling: A systematic and critical review

Energy communities are decentralized socio-technical systems where energy is jointly generated and distributed among a community of households locally. As the energy that is shared among the community is commonly electricity, the energy community's literature is dominated by electricity-systems and mostly neglects collective thermal energy as an...

Energy security in community energy systems: An agent-based modelling approach

In community energy systems, the energy demand of a group of households is met by collectively generated electricity and heat from renewable energy sources. What makes these systems unique is their collective and collaborative form of organization and their distributed energy generation. While these features are crucial to the resilience of...

Behavioural attributes towards collective energy security in thermal energy communities: Environmental-friendly behaviour matters

Community energy systems as decentralized and collective renewable energy systems, where the energy is jointly generated and distributed among a community of households, are gaining momentum. The collective action of individual households as a core characteristic of such energy systems influences the energy availability, energy costs, and...

Modelling Energy Security: The Case of Dutch Urban Energy Communities

Energy communities are gaining momentum in the context of the energy transition. Given the distributed and collective action nature of energy communities, energy security of these local energy systems is more than just security of supply and related to issues such as affordability and acceptability of energy to members of the community. We build...

Simulating thermal energy community formation: Institutional enablers outplaying technological choice

Energy communities are key elements for local energy transitions, collectively generating, distributing and consuming energy, using renewable energy technologies. Thermal energy communities, as one type of energy community, are focused on thermal energy applications, such as heating, cooling, bathing, showering and providing hot tap water. As...

Formation and continuation of thermal energy community systems: An explorative agent-based model for the netherlands

Energy communities are key elements in the energy transition at the local level as they aim to generate and distribute energy based on renewable energy technologies locally. The literature on community energy systems is dominated by the study of electricity systems. Yet, thermal energy applications cover 75% of the total energy consumption in...