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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 9186

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Dr. Melchiorre Casisi

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Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy
Interests: renewable energy technologies; MILP models; optimization; simulation; energy engineering; energy conservation; energy saving; energy systems; energy efficiency cogeneration; sustainable energy; energy modeling; district heating network; optimization modeling; energy management
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Prof. Dr. Mauro Reini

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Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy
Interests: renewable energy technologies; engineering thermodynamics; thermal engineering; energy engineering; energy conversion; distributed generation; energy saving; applied thermodynamics; energy modeling; energy management; energy efficiency cogeneration; energy systems; power plants; sustainable energy; energy optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the energy issue has been playing a fundamental role in terms of environmental sustainability and the competitiveness of businesses. In fact, the triad of EU objectives to 2030 provides for the 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990, the achievement of the target of 32% of penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) in energy consumption, and the 32.5% reduction in consumption as a goal for energy efficiency.

This Special Issue aims to consider, within the energy communities, the optimization of energy systems, passing from the management of the production of electrical and thermal energy, their storage, and their distribution through electricity networks and district heating and cooling networks. The contributions to this Special Issue are expected to usefully integrate the existing scientific literature, highlighting the consequence of these innovations and referring to the new reality of the energy communities, emerging from the provisions of the European Commission. At the same time, the emerging interest of the political administrators for the energy communities is producing a new regulatory context, where the theoretical results of the optimal energy distributed production and allocation can be tested in the real world. Papers dealing with this kind of real applications or presenting projects where full-scale tests are planned for the near future are also welcome.

Keywords

District heating and cooling networks
District energy systems
Energy efficiency cogeneration
Optimization of energy systems
MILP Models
Renewable energy technologies
Environmental sustainability
Sustainable energy
Energy management
Exergy analysis
Circular economy

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

39 pages, 4455 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Optimal Sharing Electricity and Thermal Energy Integration for an Energy Community in the Perspective of 100% RES Scenario

by Ronelly De Souza, Emanuele Nadalon, Melchiorre Casisi and Mauro Reini

Sustainability 2022, 14(16), 10125; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610125 - 15 Aug 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1203

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the optimal district integration of a distributed generation (DG) system for an energy community (EC) and the implementation of sharing electricity (SE) between users. In recent years, the scientific community has frequently discussed potential pathways to achieve a 100% renewable energy source (RES) scenario, mainly through increasing electrification in all sectors. However, cooling-, heat-, and power-related technologies are expected to play a crucial role in the transition to a 100% RES scenario. For this reason, a research gap has been identified when it comes to an optimal SE solution and its effects on the optimal district heating and cooling network (DHCN) allowing both electrical and thermal integration among users. The considered system includes several components for each EC user, with a central unit and a DHCN connecting them all. Moreover, the users inside the EC can exchange electricity with each other through the existing electric grid. Furthermore, the EC considers cooling storage as well as heat storage systems. This paper applies the Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) methodology for the single-objective optimization of an EC, in Northeast Italy, considering the total annual cost for owning, operating, and maintaining the entire system as the economic objective function. After the optimization, the total annual CO₂ emissions were calculated to evaluate the environmental effects of the different solutions. The energy system is optimized in different scenarios, considering the usage of renewable resources and different prices for the purchase of electricity and natural gas, as well as different prices for selling electricity. Results showed that, without changing utility prices, the implementation of SE allowed for a reduction of 85% in the total electricity bought from the grid by the EC. Moreover, the total annual EC costs and CO₂ emissions were reduced by 80 k€ and 280 t, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue District Energy System and Energy Management)

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16 pages, 2290 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fair Virtual Energy Storage System Operation for Smart Energy Communities

by Eunsung Oh

Sustainability 2022, 14(15), 9413; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159413 - 01 Aug 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1503

Abstract

A virtual energy storage system (VESS) logically shares a physical energy storage system among multiple units. In resource sharing, the distribution of benefits is a critical problem. As a resolution, this study proposes a fair VESS operation method for smart energy communities that involve groups of energy consumption units. First, the cost and resource fairness indices are defined as the benefit and VESS usage proportional to the investment cost, respectively. The fair VESS operation problem is formulated considering the fairness indices that could be solved optimally by applying gradient methods without additional computational burden. The simulation results using the dataset in Korea demonstrate that the proposed operation allows the fair distribution of the benefit and resource usage among units with a marginal benefit reduction of approximately 5% in relation to the VESS operation to maximize the benefit. Moreover, it is shown that the resource fairness that controls the VESS usage limits the total benefit, and the cost fairness distributes the benefit among units according to the cost contribution. Furthermore, the proposed VESS operation can manage the VESS lifetime and improve the system performance of the utility grid. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue District Energy System and Energy Management)

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10 pages, 3155 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Price Premium for the District Heating System: An Empirical Investigation on South Korean Residents

by Ju-Hee Kim, Seul-Ye Lim and Seung-Hoon Yoo

Sustainability 2022, 14(12), 6972; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14126972 - 07 Jun 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1188

Abstract

Representative heating methods in residential buildings in South Korea are the boiler-based individual heating system (IHS) and the district heating system (DHS). When constructing a large-scale new city or redeveloping an old one, the heating method must be determined in advance by reflecting consumers’ preferences. This article intends to explore the price premium that South Korean residents are willing to pay for DHS over IHS. The price premium means the consumer’s additional willingness to pay (AWTP). To obtain this, contingent valuation was employed and the data were gathered by conducting a nationwide survey of 1000 people. The one-and-one-half-bounded model was adopted as the method of inducing the AWTP. Comparison of the results from estimating the model with those from estimating other models revealed that there was no significant difference between the two. Moreover, the former held statistical significance. The price premium or AWTP was estimated as KRW 4353 (USD 3.88) per Gcal. This value corresponds to about 5.9% of the residential heat price, which was KRW 73,587 (USD 65.59) per Gcal in 2020. Heating prices are almost the same, with little difference between DHS and IHS. The results suggest that a large number of residents place a price premium on DHS over IHS. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue District Energy System and Energy Management)

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19 pages, 5597 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Many-Objective Hybrid Optimization Method for Impeller Profile Design of Low Specific Speed Centrifugal Pump in District Energy Systems

by Zheming Tong, Jiage Xin and Chengzhen Ling

Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 10537; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910537 - 23 Sep 2021

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2342

Abstract

Low specific speed centrifugal pumps (LSSCP) are widely utilized in district energy systems to promote the integration of renewable energy. However, the performance of LSSCP becomes inefficient due to harsh operating conditions resulting in substantial increase in energy consumption. Many-objective optimization is significant in improving the performance of LSSCP and promoting the sustainability of district energy systems. Among the existing optimization methods, global optimization methods are limited by high computational cost when solving many-objective optimization problems, and gradient-based optimization methods face difficulties in locating the global optimum. In the present study, a hybrid optimization method was developed for solving many-objective optimization problems of LSSCP. The LSSCP optimization result of the hybrid algorithm was compared with that of the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA), so as to demonstrate the capacity of the proposed method. In the designed flow condition without cavitation, the hydraulic efficiency obtained by the hybrid optimization algorithm was found to be 9.5%, 5.4%, and 4.7% higher than those of the original, NSGA-II, and NSGA-III optimized results, respectively. The shaft power was 10.3%, 8.7% and 5.1% less than said three optimized results. The maximum turbulent kinetic energy in the flow passage obtained from the hybrid optimization was only 2.2 J/kg, which was 67% and 46% less than that of the NSGA-II and NSGA-III optimized results, respectively. In the designed flow condition with cavitation, the net positive suction head critical optimized by the hybrid model was 0.857 m, which was substantially reduced compared with the original and NSGA- II optimized results. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue District Energy System and Energy Management)

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10 pages, 689 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Price and Income Elasticities of Residential Heat Demand from District Heating System: A Price Sensitivity Measurement Experiment in South Korea

by Seul-Ye Lim, Jeoung-Sik Min and Seung-Hoon Yoo

Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7242; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137242 - 28 Jun 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1583

Abstract

Since the price for residential heat (RH) from district heating system in South Korea is regulated by the government rather than being freely determined in the market, it is difficult to estimate the demand function for RH properly using the distorted market data. Thus, undistorted data on price and demand are required in obtaining the demand function. This article tries to estimate the demand function for RH by applying the price sensitivity measurement (PSM) technique, with some variation, and then use this to obtain information about the price and income elasticities. To this end, in the PSM survey 1000 households were first asked about their consumption of RH and their expenditure on that consumption and then asked about how much they would lower their demand for RH in response to four hypothetical increases in the price for RH (10%, 20%, 50%, and 100%). Thus, five sets of price and consumption of RH were available for each household. The demand function for RH was estimated using a total of 5000 observations. The price and income elasticities were estimated with statistical significance to be about −0.478 and 0.033, respectively. These values can be utilized in decision-making and/or policy-making related to RH management. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue District Energy System and Energy Management)

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