Energy Security of Thermal Energy Communities

This thesis aims to support the design and implementation of energy-secure thermal energy communities (TEC) by investigating their technical, behavioural and institutional settings through a collective action perspective. The thesis shows that energy-secure TEC initiatives are collective energy systems with particular characteristics and surrounding conditions. The thesis demonstrates, by building and using a number of agent-based models, that behavioural and institutional settings are relatively more influential than technical settings for establishing and sustaining the functioning of energy-secure collective thermal energy systems. In particular, a combination of aquifer thermal energy storage with heat pumps positively impacted TEC initiatives' energy security. The most crucial technical requirement for the energy security of TEC initiatives is a connection to a natural gas grid. The thesis recommends that individual households initiate their own (thermal) energy communities, and policy-makers support such initiatives.