Start 4.0, as part of the 2023 call for industrial research projects, financed with PNRR funds, has provided approximately 286,761.53 euros to support the development of the “EVERGRID” project. Proposed by NEXTAGE SRL, in collaboration with FLAIRBIT SRL and CAMELOT BIOMEDICAL SYSTEMS SRL, the project aims to digitalize electricity generation and distribution infrastructures to ensure resilience and reliability of the energy system and reduce the risks of imbalance in energy production and consumption.
To address the challenge of climate change, ensure energy at reasonable costs for all and reduce dependence on fossil fuels from politically unstable areas, a digital and sustainable revolution of our energy system is necessary. The European Green Deal calls for the installation of solar panels on all commercial and public roofs by 2027 and on new homes by 2029, the introduction of 10 million heat pumps in five years, and the replacement of 30 million fossil fuel vehicles with zero-emission models by 2030. The goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55% and achieving 45% coverage from renewable sources by 2030 requires a more advanced and dynamic energy system than the current one, supported by deep digitalization.
This transformation will lead to an increasingly decentralized electricity grid, in which there will be different types of aggregates – such as energy communities at the level of condominiums, neighborhoods and industrial areas – capable of exploiting local resources. However, local energy production systems will operate with their own management strategies and will be based on non-constant sources, amplifying the risk of misalignment between energy supply and demand. The problem shifts from the transmission level to the distribution level of energy. The increasing adoption of electric vehicles introduces significant challenges to the grid, due to unexpected peaks in energy demand during simultaneous charging periods, causing imbalances in the grid.
EVERGRID, combining the expertise of the involved industrial partners and a research institution, aims to develop, integrate and validate on a real micro grid the enabling technologies for the digital transformation of generation and distribution infrastructures. This project will demonstrate how Machine Learning, IoT and Digital Twin can ensure the resilience and reliability of the energy system and reduce the risks of imbalances in energy production and consumption. EVERGRID will provide solutions to integrate the distribution grid with buildings, creating an intermediation layer between the micro grid and electrical loads inside the building. The use of enabling technologies such as IoT, digital twins, BIM, artificial intelligence and mobile apps will allow end consumers and the building to respond efficiently to changing conditions, modeling, monitoring and predicting power flows and inefficiencies in real time. The system will be applied to the use case of a university campus, whose digital BIM and energy model will allow to optimize the operation of the network of charging stations for electric vehicles, the balancing of renewable resources present in the local microgrid and the reduction of inefficiencies.