A. Cervone

Design of solar chimney power plant for Mediterranean countries

The solar chimney, also known as solar updraft tower, is a proposed type of renewable-energy power plant that combines a solar air collector and a central high tube to generate a solar induced convective flow which drives turbines, generating thus electricity. In this paper, it is first described the functional principle of the solar chimney. Some results of the thermodynamic analysis performed are given, including a model for solar collector. The study also considers the performance of a particular reference plant equipped with a floating chimney, with specified climate conditions in Sicily, Italy. A basic economic analysis is finally performed.

Technical and economic analysis of a micro-tri/cogeneration system with reference to the primary power source in a shopping center

The aim of this paper is to provide a method of analysis for a technical and economic study on the installation of a cogeneration or trigeneration system in a commercial site. A case study is developed with particular reference to the economics a type of micro CHP is be considered for this application.

Impact assessment of an energy management system on environmental pollution and economic performance

This paper proposes a fast and simple algorithm to assess the impact of an energy management system on the environmental and economic performance of a production process. The proposed technique is based on correlations among a set of energy drivers, uses quadratic regression methods and variance analysis. Modeling and parameter extrapolation, factors variability, multi-variable statistics and mean square error are used in order to derive a simple functional relationship between a set of state variables, allowing thus to obtain advanced solutions. Finally, the described mathematical models are implemented in software that is applied to the case study of a food products company. Results indicate the future research directions as well. It is worth notice that the proposed method is not restricted to energy management problems but can also be applied to many other engineering management systems.

Financial analysis of renewable energy investments in Italy in 2013

The present paper analyses the financial aspects of investing in different renewable energy technologies: photovoltaic, wind and hydro. To perform the financial analysis on the afore-mentioned plants for different types of investors, three different sizes of system have been considered: 5 kW for domestic uses, 20 kW for small business activities and 1 MW for companies involved in producing and selling energy. A description of present incentives in renewable energy production in Italy in 2013 has been reported. For each case study a comparison of different cost solution has been proposed. To evaluate the financial convenience of the investments specific economical indices have been used and compared.