First things first: laying the foundations for smart energy communities by exploring concepts and realities in European case studies

Smartness has become a central theme in practical and theoretical discussions of energy system decarbonisation. Smart technology is widely regarded as critical to the effective operation of a system based predominantly on distributed, renewable sources. This paper examines the concept and reality of smartness with regards to another prominent feature of emerging energy systems: energy communities. Both phenomena are seen as highly significant in the EU Clean Energy Package, yet the interface between them has received little explicit attention. In this study, we explore the meaning of ‘smart’ in the context of energy communities, to contribute to building a solid foundation for future research on smart energy communities. A rapid review was conducted to gain an understanding of how ‘smartness’ is mobilised in the literature. The resulting insights were applied to six case studies in five European countries. In doing so we answer the question, what does ‘smart’ mean in the context of energy communities? Our findings suggest while there appears to be agreement that smartness is based on information and communication technology, the plethora of technologies and community configurations this entails is often neglected. To address this lack of specificity, we propose that smartness may be thought of as a sociotechnical concept and issue, and outline some of its dimensions, including types of technology interactions, degrees of sophistication and its relation to the concept of community.