Renewable Energy Technologies for Small Scale Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The attention of governments and communities to energy and environmental issues, the need for decarbonization and denuclearization to reduce pollution, the risks of disasters, and the growing awareness of the positive economic and social impact of renewable energy driven systems are the main reasons that, nowaday, there is support for the massive diffusion of renewable energy technologies.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to collect recent, interesting, and original studies that demonstrate energy, environmental, economic and social benefits derived from the proper installation and operation of small scale renewable systems in industrialized and developing areas.

The complexity of renewable energy convertion systems, their management, and optimization, considering the bidirectional interaction with external energy networks and coupling with conventional fossil fuel-based energy devices are the main challenges that research needs to face in order to support their diffusion.

Furthermore, the ongoing transition from centralized to distributed generation systems is sustained by the commercialization of small-scale energy conversion systems for residential and light commercial applications, based on both fossil fuels and renewable sources. However, the miniaturization of energy-conversion devices often leads to an efficiency reduction (due to the so-called “size effect”), and this obviously has a negative effect on energy, economic, and emission performance of distributed generators.

As stated above, papers that analyze renewable energy technologies for small-scale applications on the basis of one or some of the following topics are welcome in this Special Issue:

• Energy, environmental, and economic analysis of renewable energy technologies;
• Reduction of interactions with external energy networks (electric grid, district heating and cooling), self-consuming;
• Community-scale solutions;
• Improving the social acceptability of renewable energy technologies;
• Integration with electric vehicles;
• Economic support mechanisms and regulation;
• Interchange of electric, thermal and cooling loads (load sharing).

The above list is not exhaustive, and, in any case, works on areas not listed, but interesting for the Special Issue, are invited.

Prof. Dr. Maurizio Sasso
Prof. Dr. Carlo Roselli
Guest Editors

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