Unlocking flexibility value in energy communities: an assessment across multiple energy markets in Portugal

April 1, 2026

Energy communities are emerging as key enablers of decentralised, locally autonomous and resilient energy systems, in which third-party aggregators play a crucial role in managing demand-side flexibility across markets. This study addresses the need for a quantitative, multi-market assessment of how residential flexibility from energy communities can be optimally scheduled considering a case study in Portugal. The central premise is that an independent aggregator can pool and manage residential flexibility in ways that generate additional value streams for both the community and the aggregator through differentiated market-participation strategies. A multi-objective optimisation framework is applied to a residential energy community equipped with photovoltaic generation, a battery energy storage system, and flexible loads. A profit-redistribution mechanism to co-optimise community cost savings and aggregator profit from trading flexibility is tested across the Day-Ahead, Intraday, automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve, and Local Flexibility Markets. Results show aggregator net profits between 1.0–19.5%, up to 1281 €/year, and community energy cost reductions between 2.0–28.8%, up to 405 € annually by participant, with revenue stacking providing additional gains. Peak-load reductions reach up to 17%, while the Self-Sufficiency Ratio varies from 29.7% to 31.4%. Reserve services and local flexibility markets deliver higher economic benefits than wholesale price arbitrage, but their practical use is constrained by market entry thresholds, respectively 1 MW and 0.01 MW. Adequate remuneration for the participants will also depend on explicit profit-redistribution schemes to ensure balanced outcomes.

Authors in the community:

• 

  D

  Diana Pereira Neves

  ist400029

  Affiliations and sources

  IST > IN+

  Centro de Estudos em Inovação, Tecnologia e Políticas de Desenvolvimento

Elsevier

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196890426001421

353

121173

10.1016/j.enconman.2026.121173

mechanical-engineering - Mechanical engineering

eng - English

CC-BY - Attribution