City-zen 'Dubrovnik' Roadshow - Site Specific EVENT

The City-zen Roadshow's are 'site specific performance based' interactive events that bring together experts and city stakeholders 'onsite' to co-creatively design a future sustainable vision for their city. There would be nine European Roadshows over a four year period, the duration of a Roadshow being typically between 3 to 8 days. The overall aim of the Roadshow team was to work closely with people from the hosting city, whether they be city leaders, energy planners, local architect, professionals, academics, students and citizens. The Dubrovnik Roadshow took place at the DURA offices in Dubrovnik, Croatia, between the 31st Oct & 4th Nov 2016. Following the City-zen Dubrovnik ‘Roadshow’ held in November 2016, Craig Martin, responsible for both the ‘Roadshow’ was on the instruction of Andro Vlahušić (Mayor of Dubrovnik) awarded The City of Dubrovnik & DURA (Dubrovnik Development Agency) ‘Contribution Award’. The award was in recognition of outstanding contribution to the sustainable development of the City. Craig was honored to accept this award on behalf of all the Roadshow team: Riccardo Pulselli, Tine Stevens, Han Vandevyvere, Siebe Broersma, Greg Keeffe, Andy van den Dobbelsteen and Leen Peeters

The Future of Power Storage in South Eastern Europe

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Ministry of Energy and Industry of Albania held a joint workshop on the future role of energy storage in South Eastern Europe on 21 -22 October in Tirana. The workshop was attended by 40 specialists from academia, government, regulatory bodies, power industry and consultancies from both EU accession and candidate countries as well as from EU Member States. The participants actively discussed the technical, financial and regulatory challenges of the energy systems of the Western Balkans, and options of how these could be overcome. The event served as a forum for sharing and critically reflecting experience gained in Western Europe during the last decade. The workshop held in Tirana was part of the Enlargement and Integration Action. The present report summarizes the interventions of the participants, the discussions and conclusions of the workshop.JRC.F.6-Energy Technology Policy Outloo

Analysis of the water-power nexus of the Balkan Peninsula power system

The operation and economics of the power systems are constrained by the availability and temperature of water resources since thermal power plants need water for cooling and hydropower plants need water to generate electricity. In Europe and North America, water shortages or high river water temperatures have recurrently occurred in the last years, leading to financial losses, power curtailments, temporary shutdowns, demand restrictions, and ultimately increased wear and tear of the power plants. On the other hand, the operation of the power system may affect the quantity and quality of the water resources. This study describes the implementation and testing of a modelling framework to analyse the interactions between water resources and the power system in the Western Balkans and the neighbouring EU Member States (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo , Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia). The methodological approach consists of combining the hydrological LISFLOOD model with the Dispa-SET Medium-Term Hydrothermal Coordination (MTHC) and Unit Commitment and Dispatch (UCD) models for simulation of the regional power system. Three scenarios are used to investigate the changes in the operation of the regional power system under different hydrological conditions (dry, average and wet years). The outcomes include economic and operational results at unit, country and regional level, plus an analysis of the thermal power plants at water-scarce locations based on their calculated water stress indices.JRC.C.7-Knowledge for the Energy Unio

How to achieve a 100% RES electricity supply for Portugal?

Portugal is a country with an energy system highly dependent on oil and gas imports. Imports of oil and gas accounted for 85% of the country's requirements in 2005 and 86% in 2006. Meanwhile, the share of renewable energy sources (RES) in the total primary energy consumption was only 14% in 2006. When focusing only on electricity production, the situation is somewhat better. The share of RES in gross electricity production varies between 20% and 35% and is dependent on the hydropower production in wet and dry years. This paper presents, on a national scale, Portugal's energy system planning and technical solutions for achieving 100% RES electricity production. Planning was based on hourly energy balance and use of H2RES software. The H2RES model provides the ability to integrate various types of storages into energy systems in order to increase penetration of the intermittent renewable energy sources or to achieve a 100% renewable island, region or country. The paper also represents a stepping-stone for studies offering wider possibilities in matching and satisfying electricity supply in Portugal with potential renewable energy sources. Special attention has been given to intermittent sources such as wind, solar and ocean waves that can be coupled to appropriate energy storage systems charged with surplus amounts of produced electricity. The storage systems also decrease installed power requirements for generating units. Consequently, these storages will assist in avoiding unnecessary rejection of renewable potential and reaching a sufficient security of energy supply.Renewable energy H2RES Sustainable energy planning Energy storage 100% Renewable systems Portugal

RenewIslands methodology for sustainable energy and resource planning for islands

With respect to energy supply, most of the islands depend on importation, mainly from oil and its related products, and others are dependant on weak electricity grid connexions with mainland. Scarce resources are used inefficiently, supplying end-use energy and other life-supporting commodities, like power, heat, cold, transport fuel, water, waste treatment and waste water treatment. It is possible to integrate various flows and decrease the energy intensity, although the task is situation dependant and involves a large number of different systems. RenewIslands methodology for the assessment of alternative scenarios for energy and resource planning is presented here, and applied to several islands. The methodology helps in choosing energy and resource flows integration, based on the island needs, its resources, and the applicable technologies.H2RES RenewIslands methodology Energy storage Islands Hydrogen

Accelerating mitigation of climate change with sustainable development of energy, water and environment systems

Integrated approaches across energy, water and environment systems can accelerate the process of mitigating climate change through urgent action. New scientific advances that extend multiple opportunities in this direction have emanated from the 2nd Latin American, 1st Asia Pacific, 4th South East European and 15th Conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems as represented in this editorial. The review of recent scientific advances connects the 27 research articles in this special issue with those of other researchers based on eight main themes. The first two themes relate to system flexibility for renewable energy penetration and urban solutions in the energy transition. The foci of these themes include enabling energy system flexibility, climate neutral islands, electrification solutions, optimizing urban energy systems, spatiotemporal modelling of heat demand and smart energy hubs. The next three themes relate to solar energy technologies, hydrokinetic, wind and osmotic innovations as well as bioenergy and combustion modelling. These themes include new advances for predicting and monitoring photovoltaic module performance, thermochemical energy storage for concentrated solar options, artificial intelligence for wind energy, micro-cogeneration, and waste-water utilization. The last three themes relate to batteries and hydrogen energy advances, including sector coupling opportunities, optimizing heat exchangers and networks as well as solutions for redesigning sectors and repurposing post-mining reservoirs for energy storage. There are multi-disciplinary interrelations among these themes and each contribution will support the wide-ranging opportunities for realizing the European Climate Law and any other similar targets around the world for sustaining planetary life-support systems on which sustainable development depends

Advancements in sustainable development of energy, water and environment systems

The integration of sectors for more sustainable systems and processes provide a multi-disciplinary research domain to which researchers are contributing with intense motivation in the context of urgency for addressing global climate change. The 26 papers in the current special issue of the 12th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems represent a pursuit of excellence for leading related advancements. This editorial contains a review of these advances with a focus on the themes of effective valorisation of bioenergy resources, energy-water nexus in wastewater treatment processes, optimized local energy supply for efficient and clean systems, solar energy technologies for the energy transition, and technologies for efficient combustion and electric transport. Other themes are alternative and cross-cutting technologies for the energy system in addition to analyses of thermal energy recovery and heat transfer. Significant contributions under these themes relate to biomass residues and biogas upgrading processes, novel renewable energy and performance comparisons in the wastewater sector, efficient micro-cogeneration, polygeneration and load sharing approaches, clustering techniques in district heating networks as well as hybrid and concentrated solar power systems. Control strategies for latent energy storage, aging processes in battery packs, engine knock occurrence and coupled numerical engine modelling, fuel blends with nanoparticle additives, utilization of flue gas, soot formation in plastic waste pyrolysis, high altitude wind energy systems as well as exergy analyses for heat and cold recovery and reverse electrodialysis are other key contributions. The advances are expected to enable more sustainable energy conversion and management processes in a time when an integrated approach is nothing less than essential to maintain a coherent and liveable Planet