Nicola Fergnani was born in Ferrara (Italy) in 1985. He was awarded a MS in Energy Engineering in 2010. He is currently adjunct professor for the class of Renewable Energy Sources in Politecnico di Milano. Since 2010 he works as researcher at the Energy Department of Politecnico di Milano in the field of cogeneration, energy efficiency and small-hydro, with a focus on Archimedan Screw Generators. He is manager of a start-up company involved in EPC for low-head hydroelectric and CHP plants. He is also responsible of residential energy storage VPP development for sonnen eservices Italy.
Lecture: Hydropower
Hydropower is the most mature, reliable and cost-effective renewable power generation technology available; it produces around 16% of the world’s electricity and over four-fifths of the world’s renewable electricity. Moreover, hydropower is the most flexible source of power generation available and is capable of responding to demand fluctuations in minutes, delivering base-load power and, when a reservoir is present, storing electricity over weeks, months, seasons or even years. The lecture aims to introduce the basic principles of hydro power plants operation with a focus on following topics: statistics, trend and evolution; classification and plant layout; hydraulic machines; case studies; real time remote-control systems; environmental aspects.
Lecture: Storage systems
With the rapid (r)evolution of the power sector from the centralized concept to the hybrid centralized-distributed one, the interest in energy storage systems is today growing exponentially. Electrochemical storage for “power services”, along with traditional hydro storage for “energy services” could play a pivotal role in future-low carbon electricity systems with high penetration of non-programmable RES. The lecture will introduce the main technologies for energy storage, with a focus con round-trip efficiency, expected costs, possible applications in the power sector and market perspective.