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Urban green roofs have emerged as a significant trend in urban architecture worldwide, offering numerous benefits, including enhanced energy performance, improved urban microclimate, and public health. This study proposes a holistic framework for assessing the green roofs' energy-saving potential at the city scale, achieved by scaling up building-scale energy simulations to city-scale energy demands. Firstly, massive building information is collected using Geometric Information System (GIS) technologies. Subsequently, prototype buildings are generated to accurately represent the geometric characteristics of buildings at the city scale. Building performance simulation is further conducted considering three types of plants on roofs. A case study in Xiamen, China, demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed framework to efficiently quantify the city-scale energy-saving potential of green roofs. By implementing green roofs in Xiamen, energy savings of 1.62–1.83% and peak load shaving of 1.10–1.63% can be achieved for the whole city. Overall, the proposed framework has the potential for widespread application in other cities with minor adjustments to accommodate variations in climate and building parameters. • Holistic framework for evaluating city-scale potential of green roofs. • Prototype buildings to capture various building characteristics at city scale. • GIS-informed scaling up of building-scale energy simulation toward city-scale. • Ophiopogon japonicus performing the best on city-scale green roofs in Xiamen. • Up to 1.83% energy saving and 1.63% peak load shaving by green roofs in Xiamen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The so-called pseudo hierarchical energy management architecture built upon the smart EV charging point is firstly introduced. • The proposed energy management architecture is a compact, cost-effective, and easy-to-build scheme for nanogrid. • The introduced nanogrid operation strategy enables autonomous power coordination with V2G incorporated and efficient power dispatching simultaneously. • Comprehensive nanogrid operation scenarios and modes are analyzed via system simulation and hardware-in-loop experiment. Most recently, DC nanogrid incorporating effective energy management has attracted widespread attention. Due to its favorability to integrate renewable energy sources and emerging power electronic loads, such as photovoltaics and electric vehicles (EVs), DC nanogrid is believed to be able to improve the energy utilization efficiency and mitigate the carbon footprint in the coming decades. Towards a compact, cost-effective, and easy-to-build energy management scheme for nanogrid, this paper presents a pseudo hierarchical management architecture built upon the smart charging point. The proposed architecture incorporates the upper-level central controller with the local power role creatively and comprises two timescale management levels with corresponding operation strategies. In the short-timescale local management level, a state-triggered droop strategy based on the decentralized control mechanism is introduced to realize the autonomous power coordination without extensive communication links. The autonomous vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operation is also implemented with providing real-time power balance capability to unpredicted and short-timescale load variation in peak periods. In the power dispatching level, a multi-mode power dispatching strategy involving six operation modes is introduced to realize the efficient power scheduling for the nanogrid. The effectiveness of the proposed architecture and operation strategy is verified in the detailed simulation model and hardware-in-loop experiment platform. The results show that the real-time, autonomous, and stabilized power coordination in nanogrid could be realized along with a self-regulated V2G operation. Additionally, the peak-shaving and valley-filling of load curve, the satisfaction of EV charging demand, and an improved operation economy are achieved under the proposed architecture and operation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Build a co-optimization model to optimize supply and demand sides of IES. • Modify stochastic programming to capture both demand and supply sides' scenarios. • Co-optimization model achieves more cost-efficient design considering carbon tax. • Basic and Standard demand-side upgrading are cost-efficient while Premium is not. • Carbon tax accelerates both renewable penetration and demand-side upgrading. Integrated energy systems (IES) can help achieve greater energy efficiency, and then ultimately promote a climate-neutral economy by utilizing local renewable resources. Demand-side energy-saving measures can reduce operational costs associated with energy usage. Most existing IES models, however, focus on supply-side optimization, while the demand-side energy-saving potential and its impacts on whole-system performance are still not clear. The increasing carbon tax makes it even more important to understand the interactions between supply and demand sides to achieve a sustainable system with a minimal carbon charge. Hence, this study proposes a co-optimization model to simultaneously optimize the supply and demand sides of an IES considering the impact of the carbon tax. A selection tree is developed to describe various demand-side envelope upgrading technologies, and a binary tree is established by generating a set of supply-side scenarios with corresponding probabilities. Based on these results, an improved two-stage stochastic programming model is proposed. The robustness of the modeling results was further validated by a simulation–optimization-based uncertainty analysis addressing price uncertainties. A case study in Shanghai indicates that the proposed co-optimization model achieves more cost-efficient solutions than supply-side-only optimization considering carbon tax. Introducing carbon tax can reduce the installed capacity of fuel-based energy technologies by up to 24% and greatly accelerate the penetration of renewables. The increasing carbon tax also promotes the adoption of more advanced energy-saving technologies. Uncertainty analysis reveals acceptable robustness of the optimal demand-side scheme and supply-side configuration with a deviation of less than 5% and a coefficient of variation of 7%. Overall, the observations of the proposed model and case study provide valuable insights for IES design considering an emerging charge of carbon tax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An integrated and reconfigurable hybrid AC/DC microgrid architecture based on a novel interlinking converter is proposed. • The hierarchical control strategy for the proposed microgrid architecture is designed considering 17 operation modes. • The optimal coordination of power exchanges between AC and DC sub-grid can be realized. • The utilization and local consumption of renewable energy resources in the proposed microgrid architecture are increased. With the ever-increasing of population and economy worldwide, buildings have become major energy consumers and greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters. The hybrid AC/DC microgrid is a promising alternative for existing power distribution systems to achieve the goal of nearly/net zero energy buildings (nZEBs). However, the increasing demand for compact structure, seamless integration of distributed generators (DGs) and loads, as well as more control flexibility of hybrid microgrids cannot be adequately satisfied by conventional grid architectures. In view of this, an integrated and reconfigurable hybrid AC/DC microgrid architecture with its hierarchical control strategy is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a novel interlinking converter named smart interlinking unit (SIU) is presented, which can provide multiple AC/DC interfaces and diverse operation modes with various control functionalities. Secondly, the SIU-based hybrid microgrid architecture and its hierarchical control structure are established. The dedicated interfaces and cluster controllers for electric vehicles (EVs) facilitate the implementation of centralized vehicle-to-grid (V2G) service. Thirdly, a hierarchical control strategy of SIU, which involves local control in primary control level and power flow control in secondary control level, is introduced to realize coordinated operation of microgrid. The model of the proposed hybrid microgrid architecture is built, and the simulation results demonstrate that the microgrid architecture and hierarchical control strategy can achieve a reliable and coordinated system operation under various kinds of scenarios. Additionally, the mutual power support between AC and DC sub-grids is realized with increased utilization and local consumption of renewable energy resources (RESs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]