This report describes research activity conducted by RSE in the context of multi-energy systems, which integrate different energy sources to support the widespread deployment of intermittent renewable energy. Resources. To achieve the European energy decarbonization objectives, it is essential to increase the share of generation from renewable sources that can be obtained through greater energy system flexibility. Multi-energy systems, in which different energy vectors are integrated and coordinated optimally, allow the creation of a more flexible and reliable energy system.

In this context and considering the functional integration between electrical and thermal networks, this research aims to develop adequate experimental and simulation platforms, design scalable and flexible control architectures, and evaluate district heating systems’ flexibility.

To achieve these objectives, the activity described in the report focused on developing RSE’s multi-energy Test Facility, in which a new thermal network is connected to the existing Distributed Energy Resources Test Facility. During the activity, the development of the demonstrator continued with the development of the supervision and control systems and with the execution of experimental tests of the plant in different operating conditions.

This experimental activity was accompanied by the creation, in the Modelica environment, of a library for multi-energy networks which was therefore validated through the comparison between the simulation results and the experimental results, highlighting the goodness of the models developed so far. Furthermore, a new centralized control architecture for multi-energy networks was created during the activity.

This architecture consists of low-level controllers at the level of a single energy carrier that are predictive and consider the non-linearities of the system. This low-level controller is then interfaced with a higher-level optimal controller, with low computational weight, which manages the energy exchanges between the different energy carriers by acting on the interface devices. Such a control architecture can handle large-scale nonlinear systems since the complexity of the model is managed by the local low-level controllers and not by the high-level ones.

A fifth-generation district heating network benchmark was finally developed, and studies were conducted in a simulation environment to evaluate the provision of flexibility services by these plants, acting mainly on the modulation of thermal demand.

The Report is available on the Italian site