This report provides a summary of the activities and results achieved in 2020 within the scope of Project 2.4 – Integration and Coordination of the Electrical System with Other Systems (particularly gas and water) and Analysis of Needs, Availability, Performance, and Costs of Energy Storage Systems. The overall objective of the project is to contribute to improving the sustainability of the energy system through a better understanding of renewable energy availability and the use of an integrated approach that leverages synergies across different sectors. The project’s activities are organized into three work packages (WPs).

Regarding the study of energy resource availability and territorial technological constraints (WP1), the population of the Energy-Territory-Environment geodatabase has been completed, and the project for restructuring the integrated atlas for the national energy system has been finalized. For the new wind atlas, collaboration has been initiated with a leading research center in meteorological modeling, and modeling simulations have begun to generate the wind fields that will constitute the New Italian Wind Atlas. For the water source, the study of the Water-Energy Nexus applied to the Italian context has continued, and collaboration with ISPRA on the national hydrological balance has started. Additionally, an evaluation of the effects of Climate Change on the availability of renewable sources at the national level, with a specific focus on the impact on photovoltaic production, has been initiated.

Regarding the development and validation of integrated energy system simulation models (WP2), a tool for programming controllable resource profiles based on aggregated demands has been completed and applied to two significant test cases. At a larger spatial scale, the Calliope software (selected for simulating multi-energy systems at the territorial scale) has been applied to several test cases to verify its functionality and potential for interfacing with territorial databases. Development has also begun on a medium-term integrated model for simulating interactions between the electrical system and the gas system. Participation in international coordination initiatives, particularly ETIP-SNET, CETP, and IWG4 of the SET Plan, has continued. The execution of meetings has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Where possible, most meetings were held online, but in some cases, certain initiatives had to be canceled.

Regarding sectoral applications (WP3), the O2WEnS (Optimization of Off-grid Water Energy Systems) model for optimizing the planning and management of off-grid water-energy systems has been completed, and support activities for institutions have continued. Finally, activities on district heating have been initiated with the identification and acquisition of case study data and the development of a model in TRNSYS, aimed at the innovative optimized management of a district heating plant, and its validation with real data.