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Among different solutions to increase flexibility of electricity system, grid interactive water heaters (GIWHs) can make a large contribution, against a relatively low cost. They can advantageously be used within a single building, a local energy community or within an entire distribution grid, thanks to the very fast response time, low cost, highly distributed resource and widely demonstrated technology. In the near future, the flexibility potential of GIWHs will certainly increase, thanks to the advantageous flexibility programs that have been implementing in some area of the world, with the aim of coordinating several million of GIWHs with the electricity network. In this study, we assess the potential value that the flexibility of GIWHs can bring to the electrical power system, compared to the other sources of flexibility, focusing on the US market, specifically California, Oregon and Washington. The GIWH technology and the main GIWH control strategies are described, highlighting the flexibility behaviour of GIWHs. An overview of the GIWH pilot programs currently developed in the US market is provided, and current available technologies are shown, both for new and for retrofit GIWH installations. Most of the papers discussed in the literature focus on different aspects of demand response (DR), but very few of them focus specifically on GIWHs, and none of them offers a review of GIWHs in the US context. The present work thus constitutes a research gap, and could help stakeholders to assess the US GIWH market evolution, identifying the potential value of GIWH flexibility.

Renewable electricity for off-grid areas is widely seen as one of the top choices in supporting local economic development in most countries, and so is Vietnam. Over the years, many isolated networks using renewable energy sources have been deployed for off-grid areas in Vietnam. However, the use of these energy sources in Vietnam’s isolated networks is still facing many challenges due to its infancy here. The issues of reliability and vulnerability of these networks are not given the expected attention. Another challenge is that the issues of the operational security of these systems could also be negatively affected by the variable nature of renewable sources, including static and dynamic security. For this reason, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of integrating renewable energy into isolated networks, and in this case, using solar power for the An-Binh Island grid in Vietnam. The findings from this study suggest that choosing the right structure of the power mix could contribute to improving the operational security of isolated networks. Moreover, several solutions to enhance the reliability of this grid are also proposed. The NEPLAN environment was selected for simulation and analysis for all the scenarios in this study.

The Blorin project started at the end of 2019 to support the implementation of a blockchain platform to support the energy services provision from end users by means of Demand Response and Vehicle to Grid programs. The experimental part of the project is being carried out on two Mediterranean islands and inside the University campus in Palermo. Customized smart contracts have been designed to support the active participation of end users to regulation services for the two weak electrical grids of the islands in the view of a deep penetration of renewable energy in the two energy systems. In particular, the smart contract for remuneration accounts for the very special energy situation of islands where TSO, DSO, energy seller and aggregator collapse in a unique market actor. Moreover, in islands the electricity provision is typically still relying on diesel generators thus strongly connecting the Demand Response programs benefit to the reduction of fuel consumption, as an effect of increased efficiency of diesel generators. Due to the critical international situation and to the climate crisis, fossil fuels get more and more costly, thus a speed up of the energy transition in small islands is highly needed. This paper addresses the problem of designing a customized smart contract for remuneration of Demand Response service provision in small islands.

Issues related to the stability of non-interconnected grids are of high relevance given the increasing presence of renewable sources in the power generation system. In order to ensure adequate levels of system's reliability, it is necessary to find new methods to ensure the stability of the electric grid. The present work proposes a methodology for the definition of the minimum number of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) charging points that would allow the integration of 1 MW of photovoltaic power in the power grid of the Italian island of Favignana, electrically disconnected from the continental grid. Primary frequency regulation simulations are carried out in Matlab/Simulink environment for different scenarios related to the generation park. The results show that with a limited number of V2G points levels of stability of the electrical system comparable to those before the installation of the photovoltaic plants can be ensured.

The Directive (EU) 2018/2001 (RED II) requires Member States to authorize the constitution of consumers as self-consumers of renewable electricity by ensuring them non-discriminatory and disproportionate treatment. Member States must establish a favorable framework for promoting and facilitating the development of self-consumption, including in collective form (art. 21). According to the Directive, the granting of rights to renewable energy self-consumers who act collectively allows to increase the energy efficiency of households and helps to combat energy poverty by reducing consumption and supply tariffs. In Italy, the decree n. 162/2019 and then amended with Decree 199/2021 has partially enacted the RED II Directive. On the other hand, it must be observed that after more than 2 years the number of energy communities in Italy is still limited. One of the main barriers is related to the fact that there is no clear indication about how to share the incentive among the REC's members. In this paper, an effective model for the remuneration of the energy community members is proposed and an experiment is carried out in a laboratory environment, supported by Prycam Home devices.

Transport sector is moving towards clean and green transportation with the growing market of electric vehicles globally. Electric vehicles are independent fossil fuels consumption, but the massive adoption of electric vehicles soon can lead to a significant burden on the power distribution networks. In this paper, a study on the potential impact of electric vehicles on the power distribution networks of two different regions with totally different realities of population density, an average number of cars per inhabitant, and travel habits has been carried out. The first region is the island of Favignana having an insular power distribution network, while the other region, the city of Palermo has a grid-connected power distribution network with eight substations. The load profiles of these two regions have been analyzed in detail with future scenarios of 10, 20, and 50 % penetration levels of electric vehicles. The Monte Carlo method having the capability of generating data on the behavior of car owners with consideration of different scenarios has been used, utilizing MATLAB software. The simulation results indicate that the high penetration levels of electric vehicles in the future will lead to high peak load demands and these results will be more severe for the regions having high population densities, a high average of cars per inhabitant, and long driving distances.

Vietnam became the world’s third largest market for solar photovoltaic energy in 2020. Especially after the Vietnamese government issued feed-in tariffs for grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems, the installed capacity of solar photovoltaic applications exploded in 2019. From studies carried out in the relevant literature, it can be said that support policies are highly important for the initial development of the renewable energy industry in most countries. This is especially true in emerging countries such as Vietnam. This paper reviews the feed-in tariffs issued and deployed in different regions of Vietnam for grid-connected solar photovoltaic applications. Moreover, the paper takes a closer look at the costs of electricity production from these systems in relation to the feed-in tariffs issued in Vietnam. The results show that the gap between the levelized cost of electricity and the feed-in tariff for solar photovoltaic electricity is relatively high, particularly in regions with a lower irradiation potential.

The new European Directive RED-II on the promotion of the use of renewable energy sources has introduced the concept of the Renewable Energy Community. This new entity has the potential to change the relations among end-users and the latter and the other actors of the energy sector. In particular, the electrical sector appears the most influenced by the implementation of this paradigm. Indeed, the need for self-consumption and for exploiting the full potential of renewable energy in a Renewable Energy Community influences how the end-users exchange energy with the power grid, the rules for their connection to the grid, the implementation of Demand Response and other energy management programs. For this reason, after a review of the existing legal framework, this paper investigates various aspects concerning the interaction of Renewable Energy Communities with the power system, highlighting what issues must still be addressed for a complete implementation of Renewable Energy Communities and their integration in the power system, with a focus on the Italian context.

The energy transition and climate neutrality are a short time scenario as climate concerns are rising fast. Small islands are natural microgrids in which the energy transition is subjected to economic and regulatory constraints and highly challenged by technical issues. As a first step, the Mediterranean island of Favignana has been considered in this study, to assess how electric mobility could impact the power system. According to the plans from the local decision makers, the island is moving towards a full public electric mobility in the near term, also due to the participation in the BloRin project. For this reason, a feasibility study about the technical and environmental impact of electric mobility is highly needed. What appears is that the network is ready for such a transition even if carried out in massive terms, while the current electric mix makes the shift to electric mobility more polluting. Therefore, the assessment of the environmental impact, quantified comparing the emissions of the current scenario with those of a future condition with a 20% penetration of EVs on the island, highlights the need of a simultaneous shift to zero emission power production. The simulations are carried out using the NEPLAN software and considering various operating scenarios. In most cases, the substations are charged two times the current power flows, but never going beyond the rated capacity.

Today, the blockchain is synonymous of technological innovation, being recognized among the 10 top strategy technologies in 2018 by the consulting company Gartner, it is more and more adopted in different sectors. However, the initial enthusiasm around this technology is going beyond the peak of inflated expectations, towards more stable applications in money transactions, cryptocurrencies and Digital Commodity Exchanges. Essentially, misguided efforts, the overuse of blockchain, and the Bitcoin's price drop have been the main reasons for this decay in expectations. Nevertheless, the exploitation of the blockchain technology in the power systems area appears largely underexplored, furthermore, the relation to the physical asset makes the blockchain application more complex but also more reliable and related to measurable benefits. The most common applications in the power systems area relate to the energy market. When the blockchain technology is indeed applied to the energy field, the term energy blockchain is used. This article aims to propose a wide perspective about the application of the blockchain technology in the power systems area, clarifying some technical aspects concerning this promising technology, the features and applications developed so far, while focusing on the future of innovative applications in the electrical energy sector.

With the average solar radiation reaching up to 5 kWh/m2, Vietnam is considered as a country showing an excellent potential for solar power production. Since the year 2000, there have been a lot of studies about the potential of this source in Vietnam. So far, many applications of solar power have been implemented on small, medium, and large scales. In fact, the total capacity of current grid-connected solar power plants has exceeded the planned capacity by 2020 nearly 6 times. However, the studies of solar potential in Vietnam are still incomplete. The policies and mechanisms for developing solar power projects have received attention from the authorities but have not been really satisfactory. The infrastructure is still poor and the power system does not keep up with the development of modern grids. This paper reviewed the potential and actual implementation stage of photovoltaic projects in Vietnam. Moreover, the barriers and challenges of institution, technique, economy, and finance have been considered explicitly for the future development of solar energy in Vietnam.

The paper presents the study of the 500-kV Vietnamese power system. The oscillatory response of the system is analyzed both with a modal analysis and a time domain analysis. The 500-kV system of Vietnam is modeled in details, including all the power plants with the corresponding regulators. The model is developed in collaboration with the Institute of Energy Science IES-VAST of Vietnam and it is validated with the data provided by the National Load Dispatch Centre (NLDC) of Vietnam. The simulation results reveal a clear identification of potential inter-area oscillations between North and South of the Country. A worsening of the observed phenomenon should be considered as possible, especially in the perspective of the new installation of a significant amount of power from renewable sources into the Vietnamese system.

The energy blockchain is a distributed Internet protocol for energy transactions between nodes of a power system. Recent applications of the energy blockchain in microgrids only consider the energy transactions between peers without considering the technical issues that can arise, especially when the system is islanded. One contribution of the paper is, thus, to depict a comprehensive framework of the technical and economic management of microgrids in the blockchain era, considering, for the first time, the provision of ancillary services and, in particular, of the voltage regulation service. When more PV nodes are operating in the grid, large reactive power flows may appear in the branches. In order to limit such flows, a reactive optimal power flow (R-OPF) is solved, setting the voltage at the PV buses as variables within prescribed limits. Each PV generator will thus contribute to voltage regulation, receiving a remuneration included in the transaction and certified by the blockchain technology. For showing how this system can work, a test microgrid, where some energy transactions take place, has been considered. For each transaction, the R-OPF assigns the reactive power to the PV buses. The R-OPF is solved by a glow-worm swarm optimizer. Finally, the paper proposes a method for remuneration of reactive power provision; this method, integrated into the blockchain, allows evaluating the contribution to voltage regulation and increases the transparency and cost traceability in the transactions. The application section shows the implementation of a Tendermint-based energy transaction platform integrating R-OPF and the earlier cited technical assessments.

Islanded microgrids are small networks that work independently from the main grid. The frequency and voltage in islanded microgrids are affected directly by the output power of distributed generators and power demand variations. In this work, a real-time driven primary regulation, which relies on optimized P-f droop coefficients, is proposed. In all operating conditions, it minimizes the power losses for islanded microgrids. The proposed configuration will allow the optimization modules to interact with each other and adjust parameters producing a suitable power sharing among generators. The methodology is tested based on a hardware-in-the-loop experimental set-up where distributed generators are connected to a group of loads. A parametric analysis is implemented for verification of the effectiveness of the proposed configuration as well as the improvement of the system reliability.

This paper describes the possibility to use the blockchain technology for load and generation aggregation in a new distributed Demand Response (DR) service and customers remuneration system. The blockchain technology and the use of smart contracts for DR allow the creation of a distributed system in which customers can communicate directly, in a transparent, secure and traceable way, with the grid operator to provide their flexibility. In this paper, the DR problem formulation takes into account several aspects, which are periodically executed. First, the blockchain records customers’ energy consumption or production, then, the smart contract starts calculating the baseline and the potential support provided by each customer to fulfil the requested load adaptation. Customers’ availability for generation and load profile modulation is also taken into account, as well as their privacy and an updated definition of the roles of grid and market operators in a new Demand-Response scenario supported by the blockchain technology. The blockchain used is Hyperledger Fabric, since it turned to be flexible for smart contracts implementation while supporting multi-tenancy. Results show the possibility to successfully apply the blockchain technology to this particular topic, even considering privacy-preserving issues.

In this paper, a droop coefficients regulation methodology is proposed for an islanded microgrid to optimize the power losses. Based on the P-f and Q-V relations to adjust the droop coefficients at every loading condition, the optimized operating set point generates minimum power losses operation while satisfying the constraints of voltage and frequency limitation. A 9-bus case study is here implemented to show the effectiveness of this new approach as well as the improved operation quality of the system.

In this chapter, the problem of energy management in smart grids is outlined. Optimized energy management is considered here as the operation of energy and power flow control in the aim of attaining minimum cost or minimum power losses while meeting technical constraints. Of course, according to the type of energy system in which such operation is carried out, the meaningful variables and objectives in the problem may largely change. As the extension of the system increases, the influence of the physical behaviour of the electrical power lines takes a more important role. Power electronics takes instead an increasing influence, as the dimension of the power system decreases although Kirchhoff's laws must always be verified. Energy management is also an interesting issue in multi-carrier energy hubs that implement a recent tendency in energy systems interfacing smart grids. They include different energy resources that need to be managed differently, but in an integrated fashion. This chapter offers an overview of energy management in a small system using a two-level centralized approach.

A recent report from the German Energy Agency analyzes the possible introduction of the blockchain technology in energy transactions in power distribution. The issue deserves attention since the extensive digitalization of business models puts new challenges to utilities in the power sector. The German decision makers in the energy field claim that blockchain appears as a close perspective and, at the same time, the Gartner hypecycle puts this technology at the peak of inflated expectations in 2016. Diffuse perception however provides hints for further investigation on the topic. This paper provides insight into the problem of peer-to-peer energy exchange from a technical perspective, providing evidence about an impossible guarantee for the so-called ‘transparency’ in energy transactions. A generic customer that buys energy from his neighbor that produces clean energy cannot have any guarantee about the origin of the energy he consumes, since it depends from the voltage distribution across the network. This assumption is even more realistic when different generation sources are distributed in the power distribution network, providing also voltage regulation services. It will be proved through some easy examples that, differently from other digital business models, such as Airbnb and Uber, the physical asset here plays a crucial role that cannot so easily be neglected.