Relleu
Relleu is a village of approximately 1,300 inhabitants in the hills near Alicante, Spain and is surrounded by olive and almond farms. In Relleu, there is a newly built compound of 37 houses which is the subject of this pilot site. This community has a strong interest in renewable energy systems, in particular solar PV, and is exploring all avenues to achieve this goal. It has a well organised Home Owners’ Association which governs all decision making that apply to the exteriors of the houses and the commons. Most owners are foreigners and typically from The Netherlands and Belgium and only a minority are from Spain. The potential energy community is still at its infancy stage and needs a lot of awareness raising and information gathering and it is for this reason that a small group of key homeowners joined the workshop. There are basically two kinds of owners: those who live permanently in Relleu and those who visit occasionally. This makes for a rather interesting perspective, but at the same time, this is a very typical site in a sense that many communities in the Spanish coastal regions are owned by foreigners. This workshop will therefore allow for the testing of the MAMCA methodology in a way that isn’t done in the other replication sites yet. Below is a screenshot of the attached google earth file that helps with situating the site geographically.
