Search

In order to achieve the ambitious goal of "carbon neutrality", countries around the world are striving to develop clean energy. Against this background, this paper takes China and Italy as representatives of developing and developed countries to summarize the energy structure composition and development overview of the two countries. The paper analyzes the serious challenges facing the future energy development of both countries and investigates the possibilities of energy cooperation between the two countries, taking into account their respective advantages in energy development. By comparing the policies issued by the two governments to encourage clean energy development, this paper analyzes the severe challenges faced by the two countries' energy development in the future and combines their respective energy development advantages to look forward to the possibility of energy cooperation between the two countries in the future. This lays the foundation for China and Italy to build an "Energy Road" after the "Silk Road". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, ventilation in buildings was not always given its due importance. The World Health Organization has highlighted the important role of air exchange with the outdoors in improving the air quality in buildings; buildings should, therefore, be equipped with mechanical ventilation or adequate air conditioning systems. This paper aims to investigate different retrofit solutions for air conditioning, evaluating them in terms of energy consumption and cost and the impact of increased outdoor air exchange rates on countering the propagation of COVID-19; the latter is the main novelty of the paper. As a case study, we take an existing office building located in Central Italy that was previously not equipped with a mechanical ventilation system (a system with primary air was introduced during the study). The energy analysis was conducted using dynamic simulation software after validation through energy bills; energy and economic analyses were conducted considering different external-air exchange rates. An optimal number of outdoor air changes was found to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 infection, a finding in line with the international literature. The increase in air changes with outdoor air leads to a rise in energy consumption and costs. These values were evaluated for different air conditioning systems and operational schedules. These drawbacks can be made less significant by combining interventions in the system with energy-efficiency measures applied to the building envelope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air conditioning systems can play a positive or negative role in the spread of COVID-19 infection. The importance of sufficient outdoor air changes in buildings was highlighted by the World Health Organization, therefore these should be guaranteed by mechanical ventilation systems or adequate air conditioning systems. The proposed case study concerns the optimal number of outdoor air changes to limit COVID-19 contagion for a school building in Central Italy. The Wells–Riley model is used to assess the risk of airborne infection, while energy consumption is calculated by a dynamic energy simulation software. The scope of the paper offers an innovative method to define the optimal ventilation strategy for the building's HVAC system design to reduce the risk of infection with limited increases in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Results show that the desirable approach is the one in which the same low value of contagion risk is set in all rooms. This new approach results in significant energy savings, compared to the most common ones (setting the same high outdoor air rates for all rooms) to counteract the risk of infection. Finally, the zero-emission building target is verified by introducing a suitable photovoltaic system to offset pollutant emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper's research question is to evaluate the potential impact of large numbers of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) on the future electric grid, and whether the flexibility of BEV charging can induce enough system benefits to remunerate BEV users for the change in their recharging pattern. The considered scenario refers to the Italian situation and what might occur through the year 2040, where a share of BEV stock of 40% can be foreseen, as well as significant increases in PV and wind generation. Although this study is focused on Italy, its results are applicable, with minor differences, to several EU countries. This paper first shows that the future impact of increasing penetration of BEVs appears to be compatible with the expected growth of generation from renewable energy sources (RES) and the corresponding reduction in fossil fuel-based generation. It also gives an estimate of the CO2 emission reduction resulting from these changes, considering an unmanaged BEV charge profile and two different managed profiles that shift the car's charging period to hours of the day when they have no negative impact on the grid and maximize the utilization of RES. Finally, it shows an evaluation of the economic benefits of displacing private car charging ranging from 4 to 10 cEUR/kWh, which could be used as tariff incentives to stimulate this displacing in recharging time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since people tend to spend more and more time visiting museums, more accurate requirements are needed for the indoor environmental conditions of these confined spaces where two primary requisites coincide in defining their optimal indoor microclimate: the need for the appropriate artwork preservation and suitable levels of indoor comfort conditions for people visiting the exhibition buildings and/or working there. Regrettably, people and artwork requirements are sometimes characterized by different reference limits of the environmental parameters that, not rarely, could potentially conflict. Another important point to consider is that museums hosted by heritage buildings (particularly in Mediterranean climates, as is often the case in Italy) are often not equipped with climatization systems because of difficulty in installing generally bulky equipment such as HVAC systems. This circumstance represents another important limit for achieving suitable conditions for the two requisites. In addition, the recent pandemic-related occurrences are pushing technicians and designers to rethink the criteria for controlling the microclimate of public buildings, and museums among them. In this paper, this issue is addressed by reviewing current regulations, standards, and handbooks (and by means of a real case example related to the Italian context) in order to ascertain whether such documentation could facilitate the development of effective rules/guidelines for proper management of indoor parameters in museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel approach to estimating short-term production of wind farms, which are made up of numerous turbine generators. It harnesses the power of big data through a blend of data-driven and model-based methods. Specifically, it combines an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for immediate future predictions of wind turbine power output with a stochastic model for dependability, using Hybrid Reliability Block Diagrams. A thorough state-of-the-art review has been conducted in order to demonstrate the applicability of an ANN for non-linear stochastic problems of energy or power forecast estimation. The study leverages an innovative cluster analysis to group wind turbines and reduce the computational effort of the ANN, with a dependability model that improves the accuracy of the data-driven output estimation. Therefore, the main novelty is the employment of a hybrid model that combines an ANN with a dependability stochastic model that accounts for the realistic operational scenarios of wind turbines, including their susceptibility to random shutdowns This approach marks a significant advancement in the field, introducing a methodology which can aid the design and the power production forecast. The research has been applied to a case study of a 24 MW wind farm located in the south of Italy, characterized by 28 turbines. The findings demonstrate that the integrated model significantly enhances short-term wind-energy production estimation, achieving a 480% improvement in accuracy over the solo-clustering approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient management of renewable energy resources is imperative for promoting environmental sustainability and optimizing the utilization of clean energy sources. This paper presents a pioneering European-scale study on energy management within renewable energy communities (RECs). With a primary focus on enhancing the social welfare of the community, we introduce a reinforcement learning (RL) controller designed to strategically manage Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) and orchestrate energy flows. This research transcends geographical boundaries by conducting an extended analysis of various energy communities and diverse energy markets across Europe, encompassing different regions of Italy. Our methodology involves the implementation of an RL controller, leveraging optimal control theory for training and utilizing only real-time data available at the current time step during the test phase. Through simulations conducted in diverse contexts, we demonstrate the superior performance of our RL agent compared to a state-of-the-art rule-based controller. The agent exhibits remarkable adaptability to various scenarios, consistently surpassing existing rule-based controllers. Notably, we illustrate that our approach aligns with the intricate patterns observed in both Italian and European energy markets, achieving performance levels comparable to an optimal controller assuming perfect theoretical knowledge of future data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrification of transport is expected to progressively replace significant shares of light duty mobility, especially in large cities. The European Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) aims to drive the adoption of electric mobility by establishing specific targets for charging point deployment. Innovative charging concepts may complement and accelerate the uptake of this fundamental part of the urban mobility transition. In this paper, one such innovative concept is described and its potential impact is assessed. The core idea involves integrating charging points into existing city tramway infrastructures. Turin's tramway network is taken as a representative case study. The proposed technical solution encompasses a charging hub powered by four isolated DC/DC converters of 50 kW, directly connected to the DC tramway distribution line. Three of these constitute the heart of a 150 kW charger, while the fourth acts as voltage regulator. This native DC installation greatly simplifies the architecture of the DC chargers. Using a conservative approach, it was estimated that a single recharging station could charge more than 60 vehicles daily. This highly scalable and replicable solution, with the potential for over 100 conversion substations across Italy, would enable the installation of numerous high-power chargers in urban settings. Furthermore, additional benefits could be realized through enhanced recovery of kinetic energy from trams, which is currently dissipated on-board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As buildings are one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, they have a key potential for energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality improvement. Therefore, the development of nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEBs) is strategic to respond to these challenges and to design and retrofit sustainable highly performing buildings. Actually, the nZEB target can also be reached with highly insulated wooden technologies. However, they must be critically revised and adapted when taking into account the warm climate peculiarities. The paper contributes to this attempt by dealing with the implementation of a methodology specifically focused on the long-term assessment of the real building envelope performance. The methodology is applied to a recently built wooden nZEB detached single-story dwelling constructed in 2017 in central Italy. One year monitoring data were collected about the envelope in-field dynamic performance and the indoor microclimate and well-being conditions. The theoretical design-stage data and the monitored data were compared. The positive aspects as well as the critical issues of nZEB target in the Mediterranean climate context and the performance gap were underlined. Accordingly, the main aspects to be considered in the design of nZEBs envelope were highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]