Optimization models for optimal battery operation in Swiss energy communities: the Lugaggia case

The next 30 years are going to be crucial for the future of climate in Europe and in the world: the globally increase of the population and the rise of the energy demand to guarantee higher life-standards, while keeping carbon-emissions low, are pushing the road of the Paris-agreement goals towards challenging paths. A massive and never-seen before green revolution is nedeed as well as the commitment of all the policy-makers involved to be on track with these goals. Europe can be considered the pioneer of this green revolution since at the heart of its Climate-Energy strategy, i.e. the Green Deal, there is a large economic investment (1/3 of the 1.8 trillion euros investments from the NextGenerationEU Recovery Plan and the EU’s seven-year budget) and a more ambitious program in the short term like an improvement of 32.5% in energy efficiency and a 32% share for Renewable Energy by 2030 . The legislative acts to reach these targets are contained in the Clean Energy Package. It can be considered the EU's "energy rulebook" and it's based on 3 key pillars: energy efficiency, renewable energy generation and the new role of consumers in a greener society. In this contest, there is a legislative support for collective energy actions and citizens’ active participation in energy markets through the definition of Energy Communities. This thesis aims to describe the role of Energy Communities in Europe with a particular focus to Switzerland. In chapter 1 the regulatory framework will be introduced, followed in chapter 2 by the different business models that can be implemented. In the 3rd chapter, the Lugaggia energy community, object of study of this thesis, is presented. After a discussion on convex optimization theory in chapter 4, the algorithms used to reach an optimal economical operation of the energy community are introduced in chapter 5. In the end, chapter 6, the results are analyzed and discussed.