Publications
64 results found
Wierling A, Schwanitz VJ, Zeiss JP, et al., 2023, A Europe-wide inventory of citizen-led energy action with data from 29 countries and over 10000 initiatives, Scientific Data, Vol: 10, Pages: 1-8, ISSN: 2052-4463
Numerous case studies show that citizens engage in various ways in renewable and low carbon energy projects, thereby contributing to the sustainable energy transition. To date, however, a systematic and cross-country database on citizen-led initiatives and projects is lacking. By performing a major compilation and reviewing copious data sources from websites to official registries, we provide a Europe-wide inventory with over 10,000 initiatives and 16,000 production units in 29 countries, focusing on the past 20 years. Our data allow cross-country statistical analysis, supporting the elicitation of empirical insights capable of extending beyond the perspective of single case studies. Our data also align with ongoing efforts to implement two EU Directives that aim at strengthening the active role of citizens in the energy transition. While the focus of our data collection is on Europe, the data and methodology can contribute to the global analysis of citizen-led energy action.
Sowe J, Varela Barreras J, Schimpe M, et al., 2022, Model-informed battery current derating strategies: Simple methods to extend battery lifetime in islanded mini-grids, Journal of Energy Storage, Vol: 51, Pages: 1-9, ISSN: 2352-152X
Islanded mini-grids with batteries are crucial to enable universal access to energy. However, batteries are still costly, and how to select and operate them in an optimal manner is often unclear. The combination of variable climates with simple and low-cost passive thermal management also poses a challenge. Many techno-economic sizing tools usually consider simple battery degradation models, which disregard the impact of climatic conditions and operating strategy on battery performance. This study uses a semi-empirical Li-ion battery degradation model alongside an open-source techno-economic model to capture key insights. These are used to inform simple state of charge and temperature-based current derating strategies to increase lifetime. We demonstrate that such strategies can increase battery lifetime by 45% or 5–7 years in commercial systems already operational. It was found that, irrespective of climatic conditions, 80–90% of capacity fade can be attributed to calendar aging, due to low C-rates. SOC-based derating was found to be the most effective strategy, with temperature-based derating being less effective at extending lifetime and also leading to increased blackout periods. These results highlight the importance of accurate degradation modelling to achieve lifetime extension through improved operational strategies.
Sandwell P, Candelise C, Solomon B, et al., 2022, The role of mini-grids for electricity access and climate change mitigation in India, The role of mini-grids for electricity access and climate change mitigation in India
Few S, Barton J, Sandwell P, et al., 2022, Electricity demand in populations gaining access: Impact of rurality and climatic conditions, and implications for microgrid design, Energy for Sustainable Development, Vol: 66, Pages: 151-164, ISSN: 0973-0826
Almost 800 million people currently lack access to reliable electricity, for many of whom solar microgrid systems are expected to be the most cost-effective solution. Quantifying current and future electricity demand is crucial for cost-effective design of reliable microgrids. However, electricity usage is connected to a wide range of social and economic factors alongside climatic conditions, making estimation of demand challenging. This paper presents a framework facilitating each stage of solar microgrid design from demand estimation through to cost-optimal sizing of the microgrid and its economic and environmental characterisation. Household demand is simulated based upon (1) climatic conditions, (2) appliance ratings and usage patterns, and (3) rates of growth in appliance ownership based upon the Multi-Tier Framework for measuring household electricity access. Microgrid demands are simulated based on the combination of these with (4) nondomestic demand based upon locally available data. The framework is demonstrated across four rates of domestic demand growth and two climatic conditions (‘tropical savanna’ and ‘humid subtropical’), alongside nondomestic demand based upon two operational microgrids (one rural and one peri-urban). When growth rates are high, newly introduced appliances tend to dominate, with differing impacts on the demand profile depending on power and usage times. Cooling represents a modest contribution to demand in the tropical savanna climate. However, in the hotter and more seasonally varying humid subtropical climate, cooling becomes the dominant driver of demand, increasing seasonality and proportion of demand at night. Nondomestic demand in the rural microgrid is primarily agricultural, and exhibits more seasonality and better alignment with daylight hours than demand in the peri-urban setting, which is more service-based. Across cases, increased seasonality and proportion of demand at night lead to poorer alignme
Candelise C, Ruggieri G, 2022, The Community Energy sector in Italy: historical perspective and recent evolution, Renewable Energy Communities and the Low Carbon Energy Transition in Europe, Editors: Coenen, Hoppe, Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN: 9783030844394
Overview of community energy sector in Italy and analysis a discussion of recent regulatory and sector developments
Lupi V, Candelise C, Calull MA, et al., 2021, A characterization of European collective action initiatives and their role as enablers of citizens’ participation in the energy transition, Energies, Vol: 14, Pages: 1-17, ISSN: 1996-1073
This paper provides novel additional evidence on the characteristics of Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs), investigating their role within the European energy sector. It analyses and presents results of a survey administered in six European countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Estonia, and Spain. CAIs are studied in light of four key dimensions, those being their creation dynamics, the way they are organized, financed, and the activities they undertake. The results presented are also interpreted to reflect on their role as drivers of social innovation (SI) within energy transition in Europe. The analysis shows that the contribution of CAIs to the energy transition has a much wider scope than the development of energy projects and provision of energy services. CAIs are intrinsically socially innovative models of implementation as characterised by a strong level of citizen involvement and participation. Moreover, they have a potential multi-level role in the energy transition, from the technological and social perspectives. Indeed, alongside traditional energy activities, our results show that CAIs are evolving and expanding towards socially innovative activities, raising awareness on environmental issues, promoting citizens’ mobilization, and fostering social inclusion.
Candelise C, Saccone D, Vallino E, 2021, An empirical assessment of the effects of electricity access on food security, World Development, Vol: 141, Pages: 1-14, ISSN: 0305-750X
Energy access, as defined in SDG 7, is a consistent component of decent livelihood and is therefore strictly connected to the fulfillment of the broad goal of sustainable development. While it may have significant impacts on various dimensions of development and sustainability, this study focuses on its effect on the level of food security of the overall population (SDG 2). Although there are many reasons to suppose that electricity access is positively related to food security, such impacts are expected to accrue through both immediate and income-mediated routes whose size and prevalence are unknown. The immediate impacts of electricity access on food security refer to the effects on food production (availability) and on food conservation and preparation (utilization). Income-mediated impacts include cross-sectoral productivity increases and the creation of new economic activities, generating new income that, in turn, would improve the economic access to food.
Wierling A, Zeiss JP, Lupi V, et al., 2021, The contribution of energy communities to the upscaling of photovoltaics in Germany and Italy, Energies, Vol: 14, Pages: 1-16, ISSN: 1996-1073
<jats:p>Energy communities (EC) are among the new actors in the energy market, playing an important role in the uptake of photovoltaics (PV) in European markets. This paper estimates their aggregate contribution to the low-carbon energy transition in terms of installed capacities for PV and evaluates their economic performance comparing with market prices. We compiled a database of PV facilities with 3672 entries for Germany and 64 entries for Italy. Our statistical analysis does not support an economic under-performance of EC. The aggregate contribution of EC currently amounts to 600–838 MWp installed capacity in Germany and 10.6 MWp installed capacity in Italy, which makes 1.2–1.7% and 0.07% of all PV installations in Germany and Italy, respectively.</jats:p>
Few S, Djapic P, Strbac G, et al., 2020, Assessing local costs and impacts of distributed solar PV using high resolution data from across Great Britain, Renewable Energy, Vol: 162, Pages: 1140-1150, ISSN: 0960-1481
Highly spatially resolved data from across Great Britain (GB) are combined with a distribution network modelling tool to assess impacts of distributed photovoltaic (PV) deployment up to 2050 on local networks, the costs of avoiding these impacts, and how these depend upon context. Present-day deployment of distributed PV, meter density, and network infrastructure across GB are found to be highly dependent on rurality, and data on these are used to build up three representative contexts: cities, towns, and villages. For each context, distribution networks are simulated, and impacts on these networks associated with PV deployment and growth in peak load up to 2050 calculated. Present-day higher levels of PV deployment in rural areas are maintained in future scenarios, necessitating upgrades in ambitious PV scenarios in towns and villages from around 2040, but not before 2050 in cities. Impacts of load growth are more severe than those of PV deployment, potentially necessitating upgrades in cities, towns, and villages from 2030. These are most extensive in cities and towns, where long feeders connect more customers, making networks particularly susceptible to impacts. Storage and demand side response are effective in reducing upgrade costs, particularly in cities and towns.
Wierling A, Zeiß JP, Hubert W, et al., 2020, Who participates in and drives collective action initiatives for a low carbon energy transition?, Paradigms, Models, Scenarios and Practices for Strong Sustainability, Editors: Diemer, Morales, Nedelciu, Oostdijk, Schellens
Candelise C, Ruggieri G, 2020, Status and evolution of the community energy sector in Italy, Energies, Vol: 13, Pages: 1-22, ISSN: 1996-1073
Community energy (CE) initiatives have been progressively spreading across Europe and are increasingly proposed as innovative and alternative approaches to guarantee higher citizen participation in the transition toward cleaner energy systems. This paper focuses the attention on Italy, a Southern European country characterized by relatively low CE sector development. It fills a gap in the literature by eliciting and presenting novel and comprehensive evidence on recent Italian CE sector developments. Through a stepwise approach it systematically maps and reviews Italian CE initiatives, to then focus the attention on three specific case studies to further explore conditions for development as well as of success within the Italian energy system. The analysis presents an Italian CE sector still at its niche level, characterized by small initiatives largely dependent on national photovoltaics (PV) policy support. It also points out how only larger initiatives, able to operate at national scale, developing multiple projects and differentiating their activities have managed to continue growing at the time of discontinuity of policy support and contraction of the national renewable energy market. Recent EU and national legislative development might support revived development of CE initiatives in Italy.
Gregg JS, Nyborg S, Hansen M, et al., 2020, Collective action and social innovation in the energy sector: a mobilization model perspective, Energies, Vol: 13, Pages: 1-24, ISSN: 1996-1073
This conceptual paper applies a mobilization model to Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs) in the energy sector. The goal is to synthesize aspects of sustainable transition theories with social movement theory to gain insights into how CAIs mobilize to bring about niche-regime change in the context of the sustainable energy transition. First, we demonstrate how energy communities, as a representation of CAIs, relate to social innovation. We then discuss how CAIs in the energy sector are understood within both sustainability transition theory and institutional dynamics theory. While these theories are adept at describing the role energy CAIs have in the energy transition, they do not yet offer much insight concerning the underlying social dimensions for the formation and upscaling of energy CAIs. Therefore, we adapt and apply a mobilization model to gain insight into the dimensions of mobilization and upscaling of CAIs in the energy sector. By doing so we show that the expanding role of CAIs in the energy sector is a function of their power acquisition through mobilization processes. We conclude with a look at future opportunities and challenges of CAIs in the energy transition.
Wierling A, Schwanitz VJ, Zeiß JP, et al., 2018, Statistical Evidence on the Role of Energy Cooperatives for the Energy Transition in European Countries, Sustainability, ISSN: 1937-0709
Candelise C, 2018, Crowdfunding as a novel financial tool for district heating projects, "Crowdfunding as a novel financial tool for district heating projects" study under H2020 project TEMPO (Temperature Optimisation for Low Temperature District Heating across Europe)., Brussels
Candelise C, Westacott P, 2017, Can integration of PV within UK electricity network be improved? A GIS based assessment of storage, ENERGY POLICY, Vol: 109, Pages: 694-703, ISSN: 0301-4215
Candelise C, Ruggieri G, 2017, Community energy in Italy: heterogeneous institutional characteristics and citizens engagement, Publisher: IEFE Working Paper N.93
Sandwell P, Chan NLA, Foster S, et al., 2016, Off-grid solar photovoltaic systems for rural electrification and emissions mitigation in India, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Vol: 156, Pages: 147-156, ISSN: 0927-0248
Candelise C, 2016, The application of crowdfunding to the energy sector, Crowdfunding for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Publisher: Business Science Reference, Pages: 266-287, ISBN: 9781522505686
Crowdfunding in energy begins as a response to reduced investments (both governmental and private) into the transition to decarbonized energy systems and to the spread of innovative business models and approaches conductive of greater participation of citizens and communities in distributed renewable energy projects. This chapter presents results of a worldwide overview of the use of crowdfunding in the energy industry. Evidence gathered from available energy crowdfunding platforms highlight a very new, but quite dynamic sector. The crowdfunding tool has been applied in most of its forms, ranging from peer-to-business lending to pure donation, with strong environmental and social mission and the explicit aim of increasing participation of citizens in sustainable energy investment. Evidence also shows that, despite maintaining their environmental and clean energy focus, some energy platforms have begun to move from niche, grass root initiatives into larger projects and collaboration with energy private sector and institutional finance.
Westacott P, Candelise C, 2016, Assessing the impacts of photovoltaic penetration across an entire low-voltage distribution network containing 1.5 million customers, IET Renewable Power Generation, Vol: 10, Pages: 460-466, ISSN: 1752-1416
Deployment of grid-connected photovoltaics (PV) in the UK has increased rapidly. By 2014 there were over 650,000 installations (over 5 GWp), spread over different market segments (on site of existing domestic and non-domestic electricity demand customers, or connected directly to the network, e.g. solar farms). This rapid deployment and diverse market segmentation raises questions about impacts upon the electricity network. Here the authors present a novel geographical information system framework which maps current PV deployment and electricity demand to sensitive spatial resolution and by market segment. This is used to understand how current PV deployment affects power flows between the high-voltage (HV) and low-voltage (LV) network. The analysis reveals that overall, current LV PV generation is significantly below summer daytime LV demand – with over half of the areas investigated showing electricity demand five times greater than peak PV generation. Interestingly a small number of areas exhibit peak PV generation greater than demand, where reverse power flow from LV to HV may occur. The framework is hence capable of identifying the areas where network impacts are likely to occur and will also be useful to consider how integration strategies, such as energy storage and demand response could facilitate further PV deployment.
Candelise C, 2016, Crowdfunding in the energy sector: a smart financing and empowering tool for citizens and communities?, 9th International Conference Improving Energy Efficiency in Commercial Buildings and Smart Communities (IEECB&SC’16)
Westacott P, Candelise C, 2016, A Novel Geographical Information Systems Framework to Characterize Photovoltaic Deployment in the UK: Initial Evidence, Energies, Vol: 9, ISSN: 1996-1073
Globally, deployment of grid-connected photovoltaics (PV) has increased dramatically inrecent years. The UK has seen rapid uptake reaching over 500,000 installations totalling 2.8 GWpby 2013. PV can be installed in different market segments (domestic rooftop, non-domestic rooftopand ground-mounted “solar-farms”) covering a broad range of system sizes in a high number oflocations. It is important to gain detailed understanding of what grid-connected PV deploymentlooks like (e.g., how it deployed across different geographic areas and market segments), and identifythe major drivers behind it. This paper answers these questions by developing a novel geographicalinformation systems (GIS)-framework—the United Kingdom Photovoltaics Database (UKPVD)—toanalyze temporal and spatial PV deployment trends at high resolution across all market segments.Results show how PV deployment changed over time with the evolution of governmental PVpolicy support. Then spatial trends as function of local irradiation, rurality (as a proxy of buildingand population density) and building footprint (as a proxy for roof-area) are analyzed. We findin all market segments, PV deployment is strongly correlated with the level of policy support.Furthermore, all markets show a preference to deploy in rural areas and those with higher irradiation.Finally, local clustering of PV in all market segments was observed, revealing that PV is not spreadevenly across areas. This work reveals the complex nature of PV deployment, both spatially and bymarket segment, reinforcing the need capture this through mapping.
Candelise C, Gottschalg R, Leicester P, et al., 2015, Submission to UK Government Consultation on a review of the Feed-in Tariffs Scheme, Submission to UK Government Consultation
Candelise C, 2015, Crowdfunding and the energy sector, Publisher: Cedro Exchange. Empowering Lebabon with Renewable Energy
Rowley P, Leicester P, Palmer D, et al., 2015, Multi-domain analysis of photovoltaic impacts via integrated spatial and probabilistic modelling, IET Renewable Power Generation, ISSN: 1752-1416
Westacott P, Candelise C, 2015, Assessing the electricity generation and grid feed-in of PV deployment within the UK, 10th Photovoltaic Science Application and Technology (PVSAT-10)
Candelise C, Irvine S, 2015, Introduction and Techno-economic background, Materials Challenges: Inorganic Photovoltaic Solar Energy, Editors: Irvine, Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry, Pages: 1-26
Candelise C, 2015, Solar Energy, an untapped growing potential, Global Energy: issues, potentials and policy implications, Editors: Ekins, Bradshaw, Watson, Publisher: Oxford University Press
Candelise C, 2014, Crowdfunding: an innovative tool to finance local RES projects?, Advanced Training Course: Integration of renewable in the mediterranean electicity market, Organized by RES4MED (Renewable Energy Solutions for the Mediterranean)
Speirs J, Gross R, Candelise C, et al., 2014, Materials Availability for Low Carbon Technologies, Publisher: UKERC
Hoggett R, Bolton R, Candelise C, et al., 2014, Supply chains and energy security in a low carbon transition, Applied Energy, Vol: 123, Pages: 292-295, ISSN: 0306-2619
This data is extracted from the Web of Science and reproduced under a licence from Thomson Reuters. You may not copy or re-distribute this data in whole or in part without the written consent of the Science business of Thomson Reuters.