This report briefly illustrates the activities carried out and the results achieved in 2019 within the scope of project 2.4 – Integration and coordination of the electricity system with other systems (in particular gas and water) and analysis of needs, availability, performance and costs of storage systems.

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to improve the sustainability of the energy system through a better knowledge of the availability of RES and the use of an integrated approach able to exploit the synergies between the different sectors. The project activities are organised in three WPs.

As regards the assessment of the availability of renewable energy sources on the territory (WP1), the structure of the Energia – Territorio – Ambiente (Energy-Territory-Environment) geodatabase was defined with the main data relating to the availability of resources and the energy system. As regards individual renewable sources, a feasibility project was conducted for the complete renewal of the anemological data in the Italian Wind Atlas, the SunRise atlas was updated and a data model was set up for schematising the interactions of water–energy flows on a national scale.

As regards the methodologies for the study of sectoral integration (WP2), a methodology for the modelling and analysis of multi-energy systems was defined, which was applied to two test cases: a urban district heating system and a shopping centre. At a larger spatial scale, an analysis of the multi-energy models available in the literature was carried out in order to select a tool to support integrated territorial energy planning. In addition, the economic sustainability of a P2G pilot plant was assessed, examining the conditions required for developing the technology.

The third WP concerned the application of the integrated approach to specific cases; in 2019, the possibility of increasing the penetration of renewable energy sources in non-interconnected islands through integrated management was considered. Institutional support to the Ministry of Economic Development and ARERA continued and a methodology was developed to identify which alternatives achieve high performances across a wide range of scenarios.

Fundamental was the participation in international initiatives and the working groups that are organised within them. The activities performed in 2019 continued those that RSE had carried out in previous years and through which it had taken on a role of responsibility in some of the most important initiatives.