The Department of Territory, Housing, and Ecological Transition, through the Catalan Energy Institute (ICAEN), has launched the online platform comunitatenergetica.cat. The platform aims to facilitate the participation of individuals and companies in existing energy communities and to support the creation of new ones. The goal of the platform is to become a reference point in Catalonia in this field and to serve as a repository for energy community initiatives.  

The platform offers three main functions for users. First, it allows users to discover energy community initiatives in Catalonia that have registered on the platform. These are categorized based on whether they are still open to new members or are closed.

The second functionality offers the ability to calculate the energy potential of building rooftops in Catalonia and, from there, simulate the creation of energy communities within the 2-kilometer radius established by regulations. It can perform these calculations by combining energy producers and consumers and distributing the generated energy among all potential users.

A third section allows users to identify and access all agents who can contribute to the creation of an energy community with the aim of creating a network that ensures users can connect with others as locally as possible.

comunitatenergetica.cat is a project led by ICAEN, with the technical support of the REACT Department at IREC and the cooperative Cíclica Arquitectura. Both organizations jointly designed the platform’s concept, structure, and features to make it user-friendly and useful for the different target audiences. While Cíclica was responsible for web development, IREC developed the calculation engine that operates as a simulator for shared photovoltaic self-consumption on residential and tertiary building rooftops.

IREC implemented a methodology to estimate the energy generation potential of rooftops, considering surrounding shadows, and integrating an intelligent characterization of the final electricity consumption of residential and/or tertiary users. Based on these assessments, the model evaluates the energy balance at both the individual user and energy community level and provides economic and environmental indicators.

Although the platform is already public and operational, additional features will be integrated in the near future. These include the ability to use real electricity consumption data in simulations, assess different participation scenarios in shared self-consumption, and incorporate industrial uses.

You can find more information at ICAEN’s decidated webpage and the press release from Govern de la Generalitat.