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Solar heating and cooling (SHC) systems can be relevant in the achievement of energy and climate European goals. The benefits of these technologies should be evaluated taking into account their life-cycle energy and environmental impacts, calculated by applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The development of a complete LCA can be difficult and time-consuming particularly for non-experts in LCA, discouraging them in developing the life-cycle assessments. To overcome this issue, the paper presents “ELISA - Environmental Lifecycle Impacts of Solar Air-conditioning systems”, a user-friendly simplified tool for estimating the life-cycle energy and environmental benefits/impacts of solar technologies for heating and cooling in different geographic contexts and comparing them to conventional systems. The tool was applied to analyse three systems (thermal SHC, conventional and PV assisted system) in Greece and to identify the one characterized by the best life-cycle performances. The results revealed that the impacts of PV assisted system are about 60% lower than those of the others, highlighting the advantage of using renewable electricity for building air-conditioning in locations with high solar radiation availability. ELISA can be used by researchers, designers and decision-makers to introduce the life-cycle thinking in the early design phase of heating and cooling systems.

Solar heating and cooling systems are reliable and feasible solutions among renewable energy technologies. Indeed, solar thermal devices help reduce primary energy consumption and can reduce electricity demand, thus representing one of the best options for satisfying heating and/or cooling energy supply. The Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) represents one of the best promising option among the various storage technologies, because the size of the storage can be easily extended by drilling additional boreholes and simply connecting the pipes to the existing boreholes; the overall energy efficiency of this system is about 40–60%. In this paper, the authors present an application of this technology for the heating system of a school building located in the Southern part of Italy. Two different energy schemes are presented: a school equipped with a conventional gas boiler system with radiators and the same school building with a low temperature heat pump system with fan-coils. All simulations were performed in dynamic state by using TRNSYS software. The results of the analysis assessing the energy and economic performances of the two systems highlighting the advantages of the BTES application in the context of Italian market.

Tourist activity strongly influences the energy consumption and the overall load profile of communities with isolated energy systems. One example is hotel sectors on small islands that are not connected to mainland energy distribution grids. The use of solar energy systems could be a smart option for reducing energy consumption and tackling seasonal fluctuation. The operation of a weak and isolated electric grid requires attention to the management of power profiles in very short time frames. Energy storage (thermal or electric), as well as building automation control technologies, can be utilised for these aims. In this context, the present paper illustrates a study conducted at a hotel located on Lampedusa Island (Italy) that was considering some energy-retrofit scenarios dealing with the exploitation of renewable energy sources and building automation control technologies. The hotel is equipped with an air-to-water heat pump able to fulfil air conditioning and domestic hot water demands. Data concerning the hotel's energy consumption was measured during summer months while yearly data was provided by the local electric utility company. Detailed simulation models have been validated by this data and used to assess the efficacy of retrofit scenarios and their effects on the average daily electric profile.

Street lighting is an indispensable feature for the night landscape of cities. It is important for road safety, users visual comfort, crime prevention and to augment the perceived personal safety. Realize and maintain an adequate street lighting service is very expensive for municipalities with significant impact on their budgets. For this reason, special attention should be paid to the design of new street lighting systems and to the refurbishment of existing ones, since many of them are inadequate. In light of this it is very important to implement street lighting designs that fulfil lighting requirements avoiding energy waste and light pollution and, at the same time, result economically sustainable for municipalities. In this paper, an original step by step methodology for the lighting, energy and economic analysis of street lighting refurbishment designs has been introduced and explained in detail. The methodology is suitable for use in cities of different sizes. As an applicative example, the methodology has been tested in the town of Pontedera (Italy) and the results are discussed, also providing a sensitivity analysis of the economic feasibility with respect to the variations of electricity prices and investment costs.

Daylight access and indoor thermal comfort are key issues for high design level of sustainable buildings. In fact, daylight provides energy savings and visual comfort condition that can foster higher productivity and performance. This paper proposes a case study of sizing of daylight devices for zenith light. It enables the decision-making process of the designer to reach high levels of daylight factor. The proposed method is shown with an example of application. For the case study, a room in south of Italy, 24 different solar tunnels configurations and 12 cases with different number of skylights have been evaluated.

The paper addresses the issue of the transition from a traditional electrical system without automation to a newer active and smart system allowing the possibility of implementing Demand Side Management policies, for little islands not supplied by the main grid. In particular, the paper focuses on two main topics related to the definition of: • an effective control, monitoring and communication system as a tool for the full exploitation of the opportunities given by Demand Response policies; • some solutions for the automation of the end-users’ electrical installations, in order to offer to the utility flexibility to be used for the improvement of the generation and distribution efficiency. After a brief discussion on the international regulatory framework on automation and ICT applications for power systems, the paper presents a feasibility study, based on the characteristics of the island of Lampedusa, of a hierarchical architecture of a suitable control system and of some DSM enabling solutions for residential end-users. The proposed solutions are defined taking into account some main elements: • distribution grids in small islands are generally equipped with outdated and hardly automatable devices; • utilities in small islands have reduced budget for new investments; • not less important, the most of the inhabitants has low income and unfamiliarity with automation. Therefore, main features of the proposed DSM enabling technologies are low cost and ease of use.