Mauro Reini is an associate professor of Energy Conversion Systems at the Department of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Trieste (Italy). He is author of over 90 technical papers, published in international journals, or in the proceeding of Italian and International conferences. He also serves as a reviewer for various international journals and conferences. His research area includes the Thermoeconomc Analysis and optimization of multi-component energy systems and energy saving technologies, with special attention to Combined Heat and Power (CHP), Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) and renewable energy systems. He has conducted energy saving studies for several companies of the industrial and tertiary sectors.
Lecture: Distributed Energy Supply Systems
When a set of users are distributed in a certain area and have to be supplied with electric and thermal energy Distributed Energy Supply systems may be used in alternative, or in addition to conventional energy supplying. They can consist of a set of combined heat and power units (CHP) and of additional boilers for producing electric and thermal energy, possibly connected by one, or more, local district heating network (DHN). The CHP units may be all of the same kind, or of different size and characteristics, and the whole system may be integrated with renewable energy sources, like solar thermal or photovoltaic energy. In addition, the nature of the users may affect the choice of the CHP units, or some one of the users may offer the option of useful thermal energy recovery. It can be easily inferred that such a complex system cannot be optimized by a trial and error procedure, whilst experience shows that the energy and economic benefits of CHP technologies can be actually achieved only if the optimal synthesis and operation of the whole system are applied at the same time. A MILP optimization procedure is proposed and applied to both industrial and tertiary contexts. The same model can be used also to evaluate the effect of economic support policies on both environmental and economic view points.