IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019 - 55

disruptions occurring in the utility industry to advance
local alternatives by aligning them with new solutions to
industry challenges. Furthermore, in order to realize the
potential of community-based DERs, there must energy
policies that can help transform the way that electric
energy is produced and used. This paper presented the
community perspectives of solar communities and
microgrids. Ongoing research deals with expanding the
scope of the work to include institutional perspectives,
the need for regulatory changes, and addressing technical and financial hurdles. An in-depth look at experience with community energy in Europe is also needed,
to learn from the experiences in pioneering countries
such as Germany and Denmark.

Acknowledgment
This work was supported by The Center for Grid Engineering Education (grided.epri.com) through a DOE
grant, and by an NSF CRISP grant ACI-1541106. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2018 IEEE
International Symposium on Technology and Society, in
Washington, DC, U.S.A.

Author Information
Efraín O'Neill-Carrillo, Isaac Jordán, and Agustín IrizarryRivera are with the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department, and Emmanuel Mercado and Oscar Luhring
are with the Department of Psychology and Department
of Social Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM), Mayagüez, PR. Email: oneill@ieee.org.

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https://climatepolicyinfohub.eu/community-energy-projects-europes-pioneering-task# https://climatepolicyinfohub.eu/community-energy-projects-europes-pioneering-task# https://news.energysage.com/how-much-does-the-average-solar-panel-installation-cost-in-the-u-s/ https://news.energysage.com/how-much-does-the-average-solar-panel-installation-cost-in-the-u-s/ http://grided.epri.com
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019

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