A proposal of a Smart Readiness Indicator including Renewable Energy Community domain

This paper proposes a methodological extension of the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) to better represent the capability of smart buildings to interact with external energy systems and operate as grid-interactive nodes within Renewable Energy Communities (RECs). The approach revises the SRI framework by simplifying the catalogue of smart-ready services, clarifying functionality levels in terms of automation, control, interoperability, and coordination, and introducing an additional REC domain. The weighting scheme is recalibrated to integrate community-related capabilities into the overall SRI calculation. The REC domain assesses community-readiness as the technical capability to coordinate with neighbouring users, community platforms, aggregators, and local grid requirements, rather than as formal REC membership. The methodology is applied to two non-residential case studies drawn from literature in different climatic contexts. Results show that REC-oriented configurations increase the SRI through metering, data sharing, signal-based control, demand-side management, and community coordination.