By adopting the pattern “economies of scale and scope” energy communities focus on profiting from increasing scale (the volume) and scope (the diversity).
Economies of scale emerge when fixed costs can be spread over a larger basis of users. In energy communities increasing returns to scale can lead to lower costs per community member, increasing the attractiveness to join and remain with the community.
Economies of scope materialise by increased differentiation of products. In energy communities increasing returns to scope can come from offering more energy services with the same community infrastructure/system (e.g., offering self-consumption and peak shaving services). On the supply side, through a larger scale, energy communities are more likely to access new revenue streams (e.g., accessing National balancing power markets in addition to existing peak shaving services), as for many uses of energy/flexibility a minimum size is required.

Implementation reference

• Scaling up and providing customers to electricity retailers (FlecoPower)
• Gaining the ability to bid on National balancing power markets as additional revenue stream (Sonnen, Tiko, Equigy)
• Increasing the bidding capacity to improve the market power (Sonnen, Tiko, Equigy)

Research reference

• Kubli & Canzi (2021): simulate different strategies for flexibility aggregators to overcome the “too small to bid” effect on balancing power markets
• Mass-customization is a further direct network effect (Takas et al, 2020)
• Market place size (Takas et al, 2020)
• Kubli & Ulli-Beer (2016): Possibility to form microgrids once the density of prosumers is sufficiently high

This pattern belongs to the core area: Network Effects