Integrating flexibility and energy local markets with wholesale balancing responsibilities in the context of renewable energy communities

Final consumers can be organized in collective self-consumption structures and energy communities to share and trade among them the energy they produce locally and can also be potential providers of flexibility services to the grid. However, the integration of local and wholesale electricity markets is still a matter of development, demanding innovative solutions that consider, among other things, the impact of the energy transfers from the activated flexibility on the balancing responsible parties' portfolio in the context of the wholesale settlement rules. This work proposes an innovative design for the integration of local energy markets and local flexibility markets based on the current collective selfconsumption regulation in Portugal. The main roles and contractual framework are defined and the energy transfer of activated flexibility between aggregators and retailers is tackled using regular LEM energy transfers.