Grazia Belli

In the future Smart Cities: Coordination of micro Smart Grids in a Virtual Energy District

In the future Smart City, new information and communication technologies will enable a better management of the available resources. The Smart Grid infrastructure is emerging as a complex system where fine-grained monitoring and control of energy generating and/or consuming entities within the electricity network is possible. This will result to better approaches that will boost energy efficiency. To make real this vision, (open) platforms providing access to the smart meter data as well as potential management and value-added functionalities are needed. These will offer basic energy services that can be commonly used by application developers. In this context, this paper proposes a new market platform in order to coordinate the energy exchanges among several micro Smart Grids aggregated in a Virtual Energy District. Some numerical results in Matlab/Simulink environment are presented to validate the proposed platform.

Management of storage systems in local electricity market to avoid renewable power curtailment in distribution network

The increase of small size generation systems may cause congestions, hitherto unexpected, on the distribution network. To reduce the impact of congestions, the use of storage systems is one of the main countermeasure. In the paper, a storage management strategy based on a local energy market is proposed, in order to maximize the utility of an users community in which local market takes place. The numerical results obtained and shown in the paper demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed management strategy2.

Local electricity market involving end-user distributed storage system

In a smart city environment, the collaboration between its users must be favorite. In particular, in energy sector, this collaboration can allow an economic utility to the users that take part to the management of energy. Previously an energy management model has been presented: it is characterized by the presence of a supervision entity named CEP, in a defined area called VED. In this paper, the authors focus on the importance of energy storage systems and present a management model that can allow to obtain an additional utility to the user who have an energy storage system and offer the possibility to use these storage systems when an energy surplus/deficit happens in VED. Some numerical results are discussed.

A feed-in tariff to favorite photovoltaic and batteries energy storage systems for grid-connected consumers

The paper proposes a feed-in tariff policy to favorite the adoption of systems which combine a photovoltaic system and a battery energy storage system. A simple optimization problem is also proposed to sizing jointly the PV and the BESS. The effectiveness of the proposed policy is evaluated using software simulations; the energy consumption of a real consumer, over each 15 minutes and covering 2011, is considered. The optimal solution is investigated further in terms of cash flows and life of the batteries. Numerical results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed policy.

A multiperiodal management method at user level for storage systems using artificial neural network forecasts

The increase of renewable non-programmable production and the necessity to locally self-consume the produced energy led to utilize ever more storage systems. To correctly utilize storage systems, an opportune management method has to be utilized. This paper implements a multi-period management method for storage devices, using different management strategies. The method aims to minimize the total absorbed and supplied energy or the peak power exchanged with the grid. The results show the effectiveness of the method in diminishing the energy exchanged with the grid and also the possibility to optimize the performance of the storage device.

An energy management model for energetic communities of Smart Homes: The Power Cloud

Facing the challenge to better manage the electrical systems, the paper presents an energy management model called Power Cloud, applied to an energetic community composed of producers/prosumers from renewable not programmable resources and consumers. Thanks to this model, the users belonging to the community can share the renewable energy resources, reducing energy supply prices, while they have a good management of their loads and resources. The paper presents first the actions of an aggregator who manages the community, then the activities of every end-user to participate to the management of the community.

A unified model for the optimal management of electrical and thermal equipment of a prosumer in a DR environment

Due to the recent trend toward the decentralization of energy production, i.e., the presence of small renewable energy plants directly connected to the grid, end users are fostered to pro-actively participate to the energy management by joining the so-called demand response programs. In addition, groups of end users are encouraged to form energy districts in which the energy is exchanged locally and negotiated, without intermediaries, directly with the energy providers. In this paper, a demand response program is envisioned at the energy district level, where an aggregator dynamically determines the energy prices on the basis of market conditions, and a Cloud component is in charge of supplying high-level aggregated information. End user dwellings are purposely equipped in order to retrieve information from the Cloud so as to establish the best energy management strategy. This strategy is determined by solving an optimization problem called “prosumer problem.” The model underlying the prosumer problem takes into account both thermal and electrical components at the same time. Experimental results show the benefits of this unified thermal and electrical model in terms of improved energy efficiency and reduction of energy costs.

Imbalances costs of small scale renewable not dispatchable power plants in the Italian electricity market

The dispatching in electrical systems always has to face the problem of instantaneous balance between produced power and consumed power. In recent decades, with the advent of distributed generation, especially from non-programmable renewable sources, dispatching has become increasingly more difficult, and more and more attention was paid to the opportunity to limit the imbalances between foreseen production profiles and those actually measured, by the payment of a fee. In the Italian electricity market, the legislation in this regard is evolving rapidly, especially in terms of different ways to calculate the imbalance fee. The paper presents an analysis of imbalances in the Italian case and exams the legislation in force and the proposed changes by the Italian Authority. Results show that there are heavy penalizations with these changes, especially for the balancing operators who manage production units from non-programmable renewable sources.

The concentrated solar power system with Stirling technology in a micro-grid: The simulation model

The electricity has a predominant importance in everyones life: no one can do (live) without it. However, this involves the use of raw materials, which except for a few cases, come from nonrenewable fossil fuels. It becomes need therefore be able to take full advantage of the energy contained in the fuel, creating cycles that allow to use the energy released from oxidation and maintaining contained losses. The cogeneration starts as a solution to this problem, obtaining energy either in the form of electrical energy (or mechanical) either in the form of thermal energy, and then dispersing with the gas still hot at the end of the cycle only a minimal part of the calorific value of the fuel. In particular, the concentrated solar power technology, actually, presents advantages over other renewable source technologies from the point of view of its integration in to the grid and electricity markets. This methodology can be used both on large systems or on smaller modest, up to even the domestic cogeneration in the context of a Micro-grid favoring also the integration of variable renewable energy sources. In this paper, the attention is focus on the implementation of a simulation model in Matlab/Simulink environment of a concentrated solar power system with Stirling technology.