10 Conclusion

For the specific case of the canton of Geneva, the most suitable zoning for the implementation of CEL is the territorial subdivision in statistical sub-sector GIREC. Indeed, the usage of this subdivision was found to be widespread both within the cantonal administration, municipal administrations, and specialized planning offices, as well as at the University and other educational institutions. Moreover, both the DSO of SIG as well as the unit that operates thermal networks at SIG uses this layer in order to characterize the demand of their costumers. Moreover, even though this zoning is not directly correlated to the consumption of electricity nor heat and does not take into account energy harvesting potentials (such as PV potential for instance), the results of the neighborhood typification are very similar to the Voronoï typification. This means that a neighborhood has therefore a physical but also an administrative meaning for the case of Geneva.

From the typification of the GIREC neighborhoods of the canton, 4 neighborhood archetypes were identified : residential neighborhoods, industrial and business neighborhoods, rural neighborhoods with high PV potential (farms, shed) and rural neighborhoods with low PV potential (village houses, villa). This provide valuable additional information on the energetic composition of the canton and allows SIG to propose a coherent energetic concept and business model for each neighborhood.

The case study of a CEL on a residential neighborhood showed that a CEL structure was relevant when district unit are installed in the neighborhood. Indeed, inter buildings exchanges, which all have PV panels on their roof, never exceeded 3% of the buildings needs in every scenarii. However, having grouping structure as a CEL that enables members to exchanges energy enable district units like a district heat pump, a district battery or EV charging stations to benefit from the PV production and enables to raise the neighborhood self-sufficiency (SS) and self-consumption (SC) by some percentage : a CEL in the neighborhood of Les Vergers with a district heat pump, a district battery and EV charging stations and subject to the proBT tariff of SIG, allows the SS to rise from 15% to 30% and the SC from 52% to 93% compared to a RCP scenario where only the buildings can consume the produced electricity from their PV panels.

However not every stakeholders benefit from grouping in a CEL. Renters and the PV panels owner and to a less extend the heat pump owner, the EV charging stations owner and the energy supplier were found to benefit from being in a CEL. On the other hand, The DSO would loose at least 10% of its revenue in a CEL compared to a RCP scenarii with the proBT tariff. However, RCPs are organizational schemes already allowed in Switzerland and DSO also looses money when forming simple RCP. Moreover, the model of consumption of a microgrid RCP is similar to the CEL model except that the DSO is not rewarded for the usage of its network since, in a microgrid RCP the network becomes private. As a matter of fact, the DSO can capture capture in a CEL at least 30 kCHF per year with the local distribution charge modeled in this work. Hence, the DSO is in a sense already prompt to lose money through RCPs and would loose even more money if microgrid RCPs are implemented instead of CELs.

In order to mitigate the DSO’s losses, a new tariff that charges more the power component of the demand could be developped. Indeed, it is the reduction of the maximum power of every members of CEL, enabled by the grouping, that is the bigger source of the DSO’s revenue reduction. As this would make the grouping less interesting for some stakeholders, savings could be made by having an electricity price for the PV panels production. This would transfer revenues from the PV panels owner to the DSO. Since the PV panels owner makes comfortable benefits from being in a CEL, this could be a fair solution. The impact of increasing the power component of the distribution charges on the other component of the grid electricity pricing should yet also be studied.