Anagrafe della ricerca

The project concerns the electric loads (lighting and air treatment systems) installed in the road tunnels that are highly energy consuming and, at the same time, crucial for safety of drive and people. Supplying the tunnel electric loads is a complex problem because the binomial safety-sustainability must be always optimized. The objective of the project is to develop the models and a systematic method that allow estimating the technical and economic viability of energy autonomous and productive road tunnels (APROT), as emblematic of the highest target of sustainability. The APROT will operate according to the microgrid paradigm: a finite grid, connected at a Point of Common Coupling (PCC) to public grid, that supplies electric loads by local energy resources constituted by renewable generation units and a storage system. In function of the real operating conditions (traffic, weather conditions, incidents, external light level, etc), the produced energy is optimally managed to cover internal loads, external loads, to exchange energy with the grid for selling it and/or for furnishing ancillary services. To be candidate as an APROT, a road tunnel needs to respect minimal efficiency conditions on the energy consumptions (EC) and adequate levels of performance (PE). The project will develop the models of electric loads of road tunnels for monitoring their actual state in terms of both items, EC and PE, with a benchmarking approach. For every type of tunnel (one lane, multiple lanes, one-way traffic, two-way traffic), the baseline of reference will be modeled on the plane (EC, PE), and the distance of a tunnel from the baselines will provide an effective tool to select the set of tunnels eligible as APROT. The bidimensional models will allow to define proper energy label of tunnels for an immediate visualization of the operating conditions of the tunnel and for benchmarking activities. A successive step concerns the analysis of the generating capacity from renewable sources at the sites where the previously selected tunnels are located. Advanced forecasting models of the renewable source production, weather conditions, economic parameter changes will be developed to derive the input data for the successive step aimed to optimally size the renewable generating units and the storage system. An Energy Management System (EMS), properly developed for the APROT management, optimizes the operations to minimize the energy cost in compliance with the drive safety Norms on the basis of the input information from the generation units, storage systems, load request, price signals of energy and/or ancillary services to the grid. In the corresponding different scenarios of possible conditions, the feasibility will be estimated with different grades of confidence by the statistics of economic and financial indices.