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The introduction of renewables, distributed generation, microgrids, electric vehicles, and new market actors, such as aggregators, have led to a remarkable change in the power network. To address the issues that such a profound modification implies on a modern energy system, here a new hierarchical architecture is presented. Specifically, the proposed approach considers the case of an aggregator of consumers in the balancing market, in which incentives for local users (i.e., microgrids, buildings) are considered as well as flexibility assessment for demand response, and CO2 emissions. The main innovation is related to the overall architecture and to the formalization of the upper level decision problem that aims at coordinating local users in a democratic way, while, at the lower level, consumers want to track the aggregator’s reference values performing demand response programs. The approach is applied to a real case study.

A new bi-level approach is proposed for the location and sizing of charging stations, considering both the transportation and energy demands. The lower level considers the User Equilibrium traffic assignment conditions for Electric Vehicles (EVs) which are derived and inserted as constraints in the overall optimization problem. The higher level presents the formalization of an optimization problem for the optimal planning of locations, sizes and unit prices of a set of new charging stations in a territory characterized by the presence of an already existing set of charging stations. A case study in the Genoa Municipality is considered for the application of the proposed model.

The exploitation of biomass in power production systems is particularly attractive to reduce CO2 emissions. However, the installation of biomass-fed power plants is not always technically and economically competitive with respect to traditional fossil fuels. This paper aims to provide a decision support system that can help the decision maker in assessing the feasibility of the plant, from a technical and economic point of view, and to provide its optimal design. The model is adapted for a plant that can produce pellets, electricity, and heat, through the gasification process. The developed model is applied to a real case study in the Alessandria Province (Italy).