# Energy cooperative Source: https://ordergroup.co/glossary/energy-cooperative/ Last updated: 2026-10-10 > Energy cooperatives for teams building their software: how membership, hourly data, deposits and member settlements work and what the platform must handle. [Energy](https://ordergroup.co/glossary/energy/) 5 min read # Energy cooperative Also known as: energy cooperatives, renewable energy community Definition An energy cooperative is a cooperative whose members produce, store and use renewable energy together. In Poland it is a legal form under the Renewable Energy Sources Act with its own settlement of members' energy; in EU law the closest concept is the renewable energy community. Cite this entry Text "Energy cooperative". Order Group, Software glossary, 10 October 2026. https://ordergroup.co/glossary/energy-cooperative/ HTML `Energy cooperative - Order Group` Reviewed by [Karol Oponowicz](https://ordergroup.co/authors/karol-oponowicz/), Co-founder & Business Owner Last reviewed 10 October 2026 ## How an energy cooperative works EU law describes the idea as a renewable energy community. Directive (EU) 2018/2001, Article 2(16), defines it as a legal entity based on open and voluntary participation, autonomous and effectively controlled by members located near the renewable energy projects it owns and develops. Its members are natural persons, SMEs or local authorities, and its primary purpose is environmental, economic or social benefit for its members or its area, not financial profit. Article 22 gives such a community the right to produce, consume, store and sell renewable energy, to share the energy its own units produce among its members, and to access energy markets directly or through aggregation. Poland implements this mainly through the energy cooperative (spółdzielnia energetyczna) in the Renewable Energy Sources Act of February 20, 2015. Article 2(33a) defines it as a cooperative, or a farmers' cooperative, that generates electricity, biogas, biomethane or heat in renewable installations, trades or stores them, only for the cooperative and its members. Under Articles 38c and 38e an electricity cooperative works in the area of one distribution system operator, its members' metering points are connected below 110 kV, it operates in a rural or urban-rural municipality, or in no more than three directly neighboring ones, its renewable installations total at most 10 MW, and they must be able to cover at least 70% of the annual needs of the cooperative and its members. A cooperative can start operating once it is entered in the list kept by the National Support Center for Agriculture (KOWR). An amendment of October 9, 2025 drops the rural condition and adds a separate list for urban municipalities kept by the energy regulator URE, but under its Article 28 those provisions apply only after a positive state aid decision of the European Commission. One seller settles the energy of the cooperative and all its members (Article 40). By default this is the obligated seller (sprzedawca zobowiązany), the supplier designated by the President of URE, unless the cooperative chooses another seller. The seller sets the energy that all members feed into the grid against the energy they take from it, in a quantity ratio of 1 to 0.6, using hourly metering data for every producer and consumer in the cooperative (Article 38c). The settlement period is a calendar month. Unused energy is carried over to later months (in practice called the deposit), but for no longer than 12 months from the month in which it was fed in. For energy produced in the cooperative's installations and used by its members, the renewable energy fee, the capacity fee and the cogeneration fee are not charged. ## What an energy cooperative means for your software Software for a cooperative sits between three parties: members with their own installations, the cooperative that splits costs and revenues among them, and the seller and distribution operator who supply the official data. Requirements that usually shape it: - Membership has a time axis. A metering point belongs to a cooperative from one date to another, and a member can leave only at the end of a settlement period (Article 38e(3)). Every hourly calculation has to check that the point was a member in that hour. - Settlement runs on two levels, the whole cooperative and each metering point, and both have to reconcile. A cooperative view needs totals and a weighted average price (cost divided by energy). A member view needs that member's lines only. - Metering points have types. Consumers, prosumers and producers get different settlement lines; a producer sells energy from its generating assets directly and through the cooperative's deposit. - Hourly data arrives in stages. Early estimates are later replaced by validated meter data, so every hour has to be recalculated when real data arrives, and the system needs to know which inputs it has already used. - Self-consumption has two meanings. Energy used behind one meter is not the same as energy produced by one member and used by another in the same cooperative. Mixing the two gives plausible but wrong numbers. - The deposit expires. Carried-over energy has to keep the month it was fed in, so that the 12-month limit can be applied. - Data sources change. Under the amended Article 38c(5), from October 19, 2026 the seller receives cooperative members' hourly data from the central energy market information system (CSIRE) instead of directly from the distribution operator, so integrations built on the old flow need a migration plan. Every member also needs a [smart meter](https://ordergroup.co/glossary/smart-meter/), which the distribution operator must install within four months of the cooperative's request. - Access follows roles. The cooperative operator, an installer or consultant working for it, and each member see only their own points. Writing the specification? Add Energy cooperative to your requirements checklist Collect the terms your project touches and get their system requirements in one e-mail, ready for an RFP. What a cooperative platform settles each hour LevelDataTypical failure Metering pointEnergy fed in and taken, summed across phases, point typeWrong point type, Wh shown as kWhMembershipCooperative and membership dates of each pointAn hour settled for a point that had already leftCooperativeInternal self-consumption, deposit balance, grid exchangeSelf-consumption taken from the wrong measureSettlement periodMonthly totals, carried energy with its month of originEnergy older than 12 months still countedAccessRole and company of each userA user seeing points outside their role ## From our projects In 2026 we built the energy cooperative module of the [Zeronest](https://ordergroup.co/case-studies/zeronest-solar-panel-monitoring-app/) platform. It settles a cooperative on two levels, the whole group and each metering point. It splits each hour's energy into three streams: used by members on the spot, carried into the deposit, and exchanged with the grid. Hourly settlements are exposed through an API and can be recalculated by hand. They are also recalculated automatically every five minutes between minute 23 and minute 58 of each hour, outside the window in which the regular hourly calculation runs. The job picks hourly aggregates, both estimated and real, that have not yet been used for the cooperative's settlement, and checks that the installation belonged to the cooperative at that time. Testing the module produced the kind of defects listed in the table: values shown in Wh instead of kWh, a producer shown with a consumer's contract lines, and group self-consumption read from the installation's own self-consumption instead of the energy exchanged inside the cooperative. In September 2026 we added a new deposit settlement mode. A cooperative operator can control the installations of many metering points at once, and there is a separate consultant role. From our projects [Zeronest - Solar Panel Monitoring App with Automated Battery Management How Order Group built Zeronest's solar panel monitoring app: an EMS that charges, discharges or sells power based on live prices and weather.](https://ordergroup.co/case-studies/zeronest-solar-panel-monitoring-app/) Where to get it - [Zeronest](https://zeronest.pl/) Zeronest offers an energy platform with settlement and control for energy cooperatives. We build its software. ## Related terms - [Demand response](https://ordergroup.co/glossary/demand-response/) Demand response is a change in electricity consumption by end users, away from their normal pattern, in reaction to prices or to a paid call from a grid operator or aggregator. It can be offered by one site or by many sites pooled through aggregation. - [EMS](https://ordergroup.co/glossary/ems/) Energy management system An energy management system (EMS) is software that reads the meters, inverters and batteries on a site and sends them setpoints, deciding when to charge, discharge, curtail or trade within grid, contract and safety limits. - [Smart meter](https://ordergroup.co/glossary/smart-meter/) A smart meter is an electricity meter that communicates both ways with the network operator's remote reading system, recording interval data such as 15-minute load profiles and accepting commands such as a power limit or disconnection. ## Sources 1. [Directive (EU) 2018/2001 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (consolidated), Article 2(16) and Article 22](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02018L2001-20240716) - EUR-Lex 2. [Ustawa z dnia 20 lutego 2015 r. o odnawialnych źródłach energii, tekst jednolity Dz.U. 2026 poz. 68, art. 2 pkt 33a, art. 38c-38g i art. 40](https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20260000068) - ISAP Sejm RP 3. [Ustawa z dnia 9 października 2025 r. o zmianie ustawy o promowaniu wytwarzania energii elektrycznej w morskich farmach wiatrowych oraz niektórych innych ustaw, Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1535, art. 28](https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20250001535) - ISAP Sejm RP Karol Oponowicz reviewed this entry. Ask how it applies to your project. [Ask an engineer](https://ordergroup.co/contact-us/) ## FAQ ![Karol Oponowicz](https://ordergroup.co/media/images/T02DHCC1Z-USU628BDK-ebc230ec112f-512.format-webp.webp) Karol Oponowicz Co-founder & Business Owner [Talk to an engineer](https://ordergroup.co/contact-us/) ### Is an energy cooperative the same as a renewable energy community? They are close but not identical. The renewable energy community is the EU-level definition in Directive 2018/2001, while the Polish energy cooperative is one national legal form with its own limits on area, capacity and coverage and its own settlement with one seller. ### How is energy settled in a Polish energy cooperative? The seller, by default the obligated seller, settles the energy that all members feed into the grid against the energy they take from it in a 1 to 0.6 ratio, based on hourly data for every member. Settlement is monthly, and unused energy carries over for at most 12 months. ### What data does a cooperative receive about its members? The seller must provide an IT system that gives the cooperative hourly metering data broken down by member, plus settlement details, and gives each member their own data. Every member needs a smart meter for this. ### What does a cooperative need its own software for? The law covers settlement between the cooperative and its seller. How the cooperative then splits costs, revenues and the deposit among its members, and how it monitors and controls their installations, is up to the cooperative, and that is what its platform has to calculate. Building a system that depends on Energy cooperative? See how we build software for this domain, with case studies and the stack we use. [See Energy Hub](https://ordergroup.co/energy-hub/) Requirements checklist For each term we send the definition and what it requires from your software. Free, no sales call needed. Your checklist is empty. Use the plus next to a term to add it.