Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development
Energy: The ENEA project worth 3.6 million euros for the grids of the future is underway
It’s called Smart Energy Microgrid and it is the experimental network that ENEA will build at the Research Center of Portici (Naples), as part of the MISSION [1] project, financed with 3,6 million euros from the program Innovation Mission. The goal is to interconnect end users with energy production plants, storage systems, micro and nanogrids in an innovative integrated and digitized multi-energy system, equipped with pervasive sensors (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) to increase resilience and reliability of the energy infrastructures of the future. This will also make it possible to experience the benefits deriving from an integrated management of electricity and heat, with solutions aimed at increasing the share of energy from renewable sources in final consumption.
"The MISSION project is part of the € 35,8 million Program Agreement, signed between ENEA and the Ministry of Ecological Transition (MiTE), which provides for an operational plan for research and experimentation activities on smart grids, hydrogen and advanced materials for energy, with the involvement of Cnr, RSE and the Italian Institute of Technology ”, underlines Giorgio Graditi, director of the ENEA Department of Energy Technologies and Renewable Sources and responsible for the Program Agreement with the MiTE.
The ENEA demonstrator it will be implemented with a modular approach, which includes subnets smart of nano and micro size - monitored and supervised with sensors and advanced control systems - able to operate independently or interconnected.
“The demonstrator will be a prototype of advanced multi-energy system which will allow the 'intelligent' coordination of energy vectors and of the various sources of renewable and conventional energy production, according to demand and generation forecasts. This will allow to overcome the 'limitations' that characterize each source and to optimize the functioning and operation of the energy microgrid ", underlines Maria Valenti, Head of the ENEA Laboratory of Smart Grids and Energy Networks.
The advanced management and control system Smart Energy Management Platform (SEMP), developed in collaboration with the CNR, will regulate the main operating parameters of the integrated energy resources, so as to allow both the optimal functioning of the microgrids and the historicization and categorization of data and information. “The goal is to develop technological and system solutions that allow new forms of participation in the energy market, promoting the active role of the user and optimizing the use of distributed energy generation systems ”, explains Maria Valenti.
To simulate the complex system of interactions between energy supply and demand, the experimentation will concern four buildings of the ENEA Research Center in Portici, which can represent various aspects of the urban reality, because they house offices and a canteen; moreover, one of these buildings is particularly energy-intensive, as it houses the CRESCO supercomputer, one of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world that absorbs a total of 47% of the electricity consumed in the entire research center.
"The creation of a platform available to the national industry to test and validate advanced technological and system solutions in the field of smart grids is in line with the PNRR which aims to increase the safety, reliability and flexibility of the national energy system to increase the quantity of energy from renewable sources in view of greater electrification of consumption ”, concludes Valenti.