The article “Multi-Energy Static Modeling Approaches: A Critical Overview” has been published by the journal ENERGIES now and can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet. It provides a broad overview of the scientific literature on static multi-energy models, i.e. those typically used for dispatch optimization or network planning.

The important advantage to be achieved with the multi-energy approach, which involves the explicit modeling of the networks of the different energy vectors (electricity, gas, hydrogen, district heating), is that of achieving an optimization that puts the development of the different networks in competition in order to minimize the total system costs (dispatching and investment in new infrastructures).

The article, after a broad introduction that allows to clarify the motivations and advantages of the multi-energy approach in relation to the current regulatory context in Europe, is structured in two main chapters.

The first introduces and compares the various types of static models that can be written for the components of the networks of the different energy vectors, defining the pros and cons of each approach and clarifying the most appropriate selection criteria for carrying out simulations on real systems, typically of very large dimensions.

The second focuses on the analysis of the most common methodologies for combining multiple energy vectors into a single multi-energy model.

Although the focus of the article is not to analyze the various numerical problems that a static multi-energy model can encounter, these aspects are nevertheless treated in a specific section, in which the techniques used to make large-scale models numerically tractable are briefly analyzed. Unlike the usual scientific review contributions, this article is deliberately structured as a tutorial aimed at introducing the topic in detail to those who approach it for the first time.