Co-Power Energy GmbH | Herzog-Heinrich-Straße 18 | 80336 München
info@beo.energy
Energy communities combine local generation, storage, and use of renewable energy to create sustainable and cost-efficient energy supply systems.
An energy community is an association of citizens, companies, or public institutions that jointly produce, store, consume, and market renewable energy. The aim is to make energy supply more decentralized, sustainable, and cost-efficient while increasing local value creation.
Several participants (e.g. households, businesses, farmers) produce energy together, usually through photovoltaic or wind power plants. The energy generated is:
• shared, consumed, or stored within the community (e.g. in battery storage systems)
• fed into the public grid when there is surplus or stored in an energy cloud
• managed and billed transparently through digital platforms
• Citizen energy projects: joint financing and operation of PV or wind power plants
• Neighborhood concepts: local energy supply in residential or commercial districts
• Agricultural collaborations: Agri-PV combined with shared energy storage
• Virtual power plants: aggregation of smaller systems to provide balancing services
• Self-consumption rate: share of generated energy that is used within the community
• Grid feed-in: amount of electricity supplied to the public grid
• Number of members: total number of active participants in the community
• Energy price: electricity price per kWh for members compared with market prices
Energy communities are a key instrument of the decentralized energy transition. They enable the joint use and marketing of locally generated energy and increase self-sufficiency, economic efficiency, and sustainability. Particularly in rural regions and urban districts, they offer strong potential for implementing sustainable energy systems with strong local roots.
