6. Building Services with the Local Energy Community—Applications

The concept of local energy community (LEC) has been well received and caught on globally in various segments of the population from Rural setting–Remote villages, to Blue Economies—getting integrated with Green Power and to Urban housing societies as well, safeguarding from the present non-resilient energy infrastructure as of now. Demand-side management, reduction in energy consumption by intelligent governance of intelligent buildings has also caught society's attention. Surplus Power generated in the buildings at different times led to the development of grid virtual power plants. Community energy storage battery, topping on the Concept of LEC grid-connected or even off-grid with smarter buildings occupied by the smarter occupants, thus creating a ‘Human in the Loop system’- (Comptes Rendus Physique Volume 18, Issues 7–8, September–October 2017, Pages 428–444) rather than all auto-controlled. With higher per capita energy consumption in countries, the importance of intelligent buildings establishes still higher priority considering heating loads and other luxury requirements. Further, the buildings are now considered energy-positive to generate power from solar rooftops for building's consumption and sharing with the community. Energy flow is two-way between the community and the buildings through micro-grids or nano-grids, thus offering flexibility and energy demand response while acting as a significant reserve. The intelligent behaviour of the structures on getting integrated with the intelligent grid helps make the LEC smarter. The wise governance of the buildings by optimising the power generation management, its storage for meeting the self-load demand that anticipates and matches the load for optimisation and then shares the energy under Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading in the local community.