In terms of grid defection - it seems that unless a customer can fully disengage from the electrical grid - then arguably they would have to pay for some form of connection charge anyway, regardless of how often they may use it. This depends on the regulation and the market though, but does seem as if the replacement of the 'old' grid (in Great Britain at least) will inevitably increase bills. With grid defection it does seem that some demands can be 'defected' from the grid, but if one moves heat and transport demands over to the electrical grid - one wonders about the ability of these to be provided locally. It depends on the local resource and demand. So - it is a bit of a murky picture at the moment - however, it seems unlikely that governments and their regulators will allow grids to fail due to the lack of revenue sources - they will just find the revenue from other places. A more interesting question though may be the ownership of local monopoly grids rather than the revenues they require.

Although the question would be How community energy sources can reduces the grid dependency ?

1. Community models having their own power packs i.e solar ,Wind & Biomass based on type of local availability of potential source, investment decision that which they made. It won't be hurting untilities business because i.e huge investment in grid expansion will be reduced ,system intermittency would not be take place .

2. Revenue generation & local employment would be add on by community energy generation

3.Remote & rural places would be empowered

agreed that Intermittency of renewable energy is challenge , long lasting storage technology needs to be introduced in reliable & cost effective form .

Thank you Ashish for your answer. You are right that community energy systems comes with added benefits to local communities as local resources will be utilized, employment will be created locally etc. Moreover, as you mentioned they can help to absorb the intermittent problems of renewables in the grids towards certain extent.

However my concern here is what if lot of communities started to adopt such systems. In most developing countries around the globe, the electricity tariffs is according to how much energy you consume. Few countries in west also have fixed amount in the tariffs to cover network investment.

First, in the developing countries with community energy systems less energy will be utilized from the utilities. They will earn less money than before.

Second, in western countries due huge investment requirement for transmission and storage to absorb high share of renewables, the fixed part of the tariffs will keep on increasing. This might encourage the consumers to get out of the grids and produce all their energy locally through community energy systems.

Both cases, might hurt the business case for utilities. Or somebody out there has another opinion in this?

In terms of grid defection - it seems that unless a customer can fully disengage from the electrical grid - then arguably they would have to pay for some form of connection charge anyway, regardless of how often they may use it. This depends on the regulation and the market though, but does seem as if the replacement of the 'old' grid (in Great Britain at least) will inevitably increase bills. With grid defection it does seem that some demands can be 'defected' from the grid, but if one moves heat and transport demands over to the electrical grid - one wonders about the ability of these to be provided locally. It depends on the local resource and demand. So - it is a bit of a murky picture at the moment - however, it seems unlikely that governments and their regulators will allow grids to fail due to the lack of revenue sources - they will just find the revenue from other places. A more interesting question though may be the ownership of local monopoly grids rather than the revenues they require.

It is incorrect to state that wholesale electricity prices have come down due to high penetration of renewables. Gas generation remains the cheapest alternative. Wind is more expensive and has to be paid for by higher prices. The need to invest in new grid infrastructure and keep existing thermal plants open, or replace them, to accommodate the intermittent nature of renewables makes them an even more expensive option than is commonly presumed and to a certain extent limits the carbon dioxide emissions they save.

Wind is closest to being competitive but is not there yet and won't be until fossil fuel prices rise substantially, which may take a long time to happen if fracking is developed extensively outside of North America.

In my opinion the technology that will change this reality is the development of cost effective and technically viable large scale storage.

In California, we're seeing companies (Solar City, etc) putting their PV systems on homeowners roofs and selling the power back to the consumers, either directly to the homeowner, or indirectly to others via the grid. Utilities are getting into this game too.

This is community-based, in the sense of being at the distribution end of the line, but not necessarily community-owned. It also relies on the presence of the power grid.

I would think there are very few communities that could be self-sufficient in terms of electricity, probably on a energy basis (i.e. average over the year) and certainly not on a power basis. So, the options are to still be hooked into the grid, or use storage. I wouldn't bank on seeing grid-scale storage that is low cost (in terms of money, materials or energy) anytime soon.

Dear Wilson, Edward and Michael, thank you very much for your very interesting answers and I critically agree with your analysis.

In Netherlands, citizens can install solar PV on their roof and they can balance the electricty produced with their consumption. If they produce more than their consumptions they only get wholesale electricity price which is only 6 euros cents/kWh. This is of course not attractive, Many people having over production are starting to install batter banks to store their energy and use it to charge electric vehicles. Currently due to network restrictions, it is not allowed to charge your EVs directly from your house. There are designated charging stations. The attractiveness of which of course depends on cost-competitiveness of battery as pointed out by Edward. The other options, is to install these systems as a community co-operatives. Then, the members of this communities are allowed to balance the energy produced.

There are around 400 energy co-operatives in Netherlands and around 1000 in Germany and their numbers are rapidly increasing. They are involved in range of activities such as electricity production, operation of district heating and operation of the local electricity grids etc. As pointed out by the noble laurettes Elinor Strom, these grass root initiatives mostly outperform centralised system. Netherlands and Germany are of course not perfect example for grid defection, a recent study in Australia assumes that 1/3 of australian populations will start going off-grid by 2030s. Other interesting analysis is on economics of grid defection by Rocky Mountain Institute.

Also if you have followed RWE developments, it wants to change its business model and want to be energy service companies. They want to install PV, CHP or heat pumps in the customers housholds and manage this systems.

Of course, we should take these developments critically. The national/regional grid will of course always be there. By saying that, we also need to think how we can organize the changing landscape of our future energy systems. Are community energy systems ready to take this role?

http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1223

http://www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structure/Flagships/Energy-Flagship/Future-Grid-Forum-brochure.aspx

http://www.rmi.org/electricity_grid_defection

Modelling my answer in line with Ashish's question, community energy sources go a long way in reducing grid dependency by displacing demand at the local point of consumption - the general idea of distributed generation and reducing transmission and to an extent distribution losses but still pose a serious problem in the following cases.

1. How is pricing going to be determined in the community/local generation network with different local contributors and consumers?

2. In the event of a short fall of supply, importing extra power from the utility or from other sources raises operational concerns especially in the point(s) of common coupling (PCC).

3. In the event of excess generation with no export capabilities, how do we schedule turning off contributors?

While the virtual power plant (VPP) is still being posited to be the best bet in harnessing available power for exploitation, the community approach to displacing demands still demands active algorithms with real time capabilities and superb intelligence and minimal failure risks for successful operation.

Dear Binod

for isolated communities municipalities in South Africa are obligated to provide free basic electricity or free energy for basic needs, this is one example of a system rollout

Discrete cogeneration optimization with storage capacity decision support for dynamic hybrid solar combined heat and power systems in isolated rural villages

Article Discrete cogeneration optimization with storage capacity dec...

http://docshare01.docshare.tips/files/20257/202573063.pdf

Article Energetic communities for community energy: A review of key ...

https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeerensus/v_3a56_3ay_3a2016_3ai_3ac_3ap_3a722-744.htm

https://www.burlington.ca/en/your-city/resources/CW-08-17-Appendix-A-Burlington-ICES-Phase2-Study.pdf