New study: Networked neighborhoods supply themselves with energy optimally and inexpensively

A neighborhood-optimized approach to energy supply for neighborhoods offers many advantages over decentrally optimized supply structures at the building level. This is the result of the study “Modeling of sector-integrated energy supply in the neighborhood”. The study was prepared by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE on behalf of dena.

Model calculations based on several different types of neighborhoods – existing and new buildings with different types of use in urban and rural areas – have shown that neighborhood-optimized supply has cost advantages of around 30 to 45 percent compared with supply to individual buildings.

The study continues to emphasize the benefits that open power exchange between buildings in a neighborhood would have. At the same time, an analysis of the current legal framework shows that the valid legal framework does not allow local actors to establish supply structures at the neighborhood level that enable such a low-threshold exchange of energy between actors in the neighborhood.

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