Abstract Body

In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, overarching advances in technology aligned with the fast-paced integration of distributed renewable generation sources, electric vehicles, and energy storage systems in the energy grid are changing the way customers are procuring, perceiving, and consuming energy-related products and services, and the way companies are exploring new competitive advantages to create better experiences to meet customers’ expectations. In view of that, there is at present an ongoing disruption of well-established, traditional energy market structures, and innovative local energy markets designs backed up by progressive legal frameworks have recently started emerging as a consequence across the globe. On that note, this paper conceptualised an innovative business model focused on demand-side management (using the flex-offers approach) and peer-to-peer energy trading for the conceptualisation and design of low-voltage renewable energy communities in Portugal. Special focus is given to the role of independent aggregators, who intermediate the monetisation of the flexible assets in energy markets and the commercialisation of surplus renewable generation within the renewable energy communities. This innovative business model is being developed and validated under the umbrella of a national R&D project named Flexigy, which aims to propose actionable policy recommendations for the makeover of outdated legal frameworks in Portugal that do not embrace the aggregation of small-scale, decentralised flex-offers and the collaborative consumption of surplus renewable generation in an optimal way in the context of low-voltage renewable energy communities.