Ricerche, contributi e relazioni

Il contributo, partendo da un’introduzione sullo stato dell’arte delle energie rinnovabili nell’ordinamento italiano, affronta il tema delle Comunità Energetiche Rinnovabili (CER), tanto dal punto di vista soggettivo, quanto da quello oggettivo. Quest’ultimo profilo, in particolare, implica una lettura attenta del crisma dell’«idoneità» come aut aut rispetto al luogo ove la CER può nascere e rimanere operativa. Trattasi di una questione, quella della localizzazione delle CER, che passa peraltro dall’integrazione dell’ambiente nel sistema degli interessi tutelati nel territorio, specialmente rispetto al rapporto con il paesaggio e con i poteri urbanistici.

A. Prevedi, J. D. Rios Penaloza, T. Pontecorvo, F. Napolitano, F. Tossani, A. Borghetti, C.A. Nucci

2023 International Conference on Smart Energy Systems and Technologies (SEST), Mugla, Turkiye, 2023, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/SEST57387.2023.10257402.

Abstract — The development of an advanced Energy Management System (EMS) able to collect power or energy measurements from remote sensors or smart meters and to provide power setpoint to the battery energy systems is a key element for the optimal operation of a Renewable Energy Community (REC). The proposed EMS is able to minimize the energy procurement cost of the community as well as maximizing the energy shared among the REC members, taking into account the one having renewable origin only, as batteries can be charged also from the external grid. The optimization
procedure is developed on the basis of a rolling-horizon approach that allows taking advantage of the updated forecasts
of PV generation and load demand, controlling the batteries setpoint according to the current operational conditions of the community resources. The paper presents the results obtained for a set up in which the EMS is interfaced with a real-time simulator and uses current and/or past data coming from devices capable of smart meter reading and from non-intrusive load monitoring devices installed in an urban district. The proposed approach is tested in two settings: in the first, the simulator represents a battery storage unit while meters data are coming from real prosumers/consumers devices; in the second, the simulator, in addition to the battery storage unit, represents also a virtual REC along with its meters. The method is useful for planning purposes and to evaluate different scenarios.

Stefano Lilla, Camilo Orozco, Alberto Borghetti, Fabio Napolitano, Fabio Tossani

IEEE Transactions on Power Systems ( Volume: 35, Issue: 2, March 2020), DOI: 10.1109/TPWRS.2019.2944541

Abstract:
The paper focuses on the day-ahead operational planning of a grid-connected local energy community (LEC) consisting of an internal low-voltage network and several prosumers including generation units, battery storage systems, and local loads. In order to preserve, as much as possible, the confidentiality of the features of prosumers' equipment and the production and load forecasts, the problem is addressed by designing a specific distributed procedure based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). The distributed procedure calculates the scheduling of the available energy resources to limit the balancing action of the external grid and allocates the internal network losses to the various power transactions. Results obtained for various case studies are compared with those obtained by a centralized optimization approach. The results confirm that, in the considered LEC framework, each of the prosumers achieves a reduction in costs or increases revenues in case it participates to the LEC with respect to the case in which it can only transact with an external energy provider.

This paper compares two forms of Renewable Energy Communities by assessing their impact on long-run
social welfare from the perspective of a local public administration. By maximising the intertemporal utility
of a representative prosumer, we assess how different REC organisations affect utility under different energy
market, incentive and technology conditions. The results show that while consumption and pollution levels
remain constant across REC types, differences in prosumers’ utility arise due to different financial costs and
benefits. In particular, high energy market prices, higher incentive levels and increased energy capacity favour
bottom-up RECs, while higher coordination costs and higher prosumer incentive weights favour top-down
RECs. Our findings highlight the economic trade-offs that influence REC adoption decisions