Managing Knowledge in Energy Communities : The Importance of Knowledge Sharing for the Development and Upscaling of Energy Communities

Sammanfattning: The transition toward a robust, resource-effective, and renewable energy system faces many challenges. The demand for electricity is expected to rapidly increase over the coming years due to the electrification of society resulting in a need for more transmission capacity in the grid. Distributed energy systems are argued to be part of this transition and the implementation of small-scale distributed energy resources has grown enormously over the last few years. Energy communities, a way to collectively produce and consume energy in a local context, have been shown to support the energy transition while providing flexibility to the grid. The interplay of actors in energy communities is argued to aid in handling the increased complexity of the energy system. Knowledge sharing is considered fundamental for energy communities to emerge and a way to facilitate the management of knowledge transfer is argued to be important, but not currently existing. The purpose of the study is to explore how knowledge sharing in and between energy communities can be strategically managed and organized, both in terms of aiding the development of energy communities and upscaling the concept. This was achieved by implementing a qualitative approach consisting of a comprehensive literature review accompanied by empirical findings through interviews with relevant actors. The collected data were analyzed by applying the theoretical concepts Quadruple Helix Innovation Systems, Knowledge Management, and Inter-Organizational Systems. The results showed that several key elements must be considered to be successful in sharing knowledge within and between energy communities. The Key Elements Strategy Model is presented as an overall approach that can be adapted for enabling application in different contexts and constellations. Since the concept of energy communities is expected to be further developed, it motivates the implementation of a systematic approach that can be used iteratively to continuously gain, capture and share new knowledge. There is a lot of potential to further investigate the area of knowledge sharing in the development of energy communities and future research on the subject is recommended.