This project has been conceived in order to analyze and try to answer to the new issues created by complex energy networks and distributed generation scenarios. The carried our research project can be divided into two main parts. The first one focuses on thermal energy networks, i.e. on district heating networks: existing case studies have been modeled and analyzed with an in-house developed software and the new concept of smart district heating has been developed (different configurations for the bidirectional heat exchange at final users have been developed and tested). The second part of the PhD project aims to the definition of optimal strategies within complex energy networks, when thermal, electric and cooling energies are required by a certain number of users, eventually in a distributed generation scenario. In particular, a specific calculation code based on genetic algorithms has been developed and different cases studies have been analyzed, also in isolated energy grid application. Finally, a comparison between the genetic algorithm approach and a mixed integer linear programming based software has been carried out during a research period abroad, at EPFL University in Switzerland
