Electric infrastructures have been pushed forward to handle tasks they were not originally designed to perform. To improve reliability and efficiency, state-of-the-art power grids include improved security, reduced peak loads, increased integration of renewable sources, and lower operational costs. In this framework“, smart grids” are built around bidirectional communication technologies, where “smart meters” communicate with all other entities and collect data from the power grid, offering specific features to each actor playing in the energy marketplace. In this paper, to overcome some of the challenges raised by smart grids and smart meters, we propose a distributed metering infrastructure which provides bidirectional communication, self-configuration, and auto-update capabilities. Our 3-phase smart meters follow the basics Internet-of-Things principles and have the ability to run, either on-board or distributed on the network, multiple algorithms for smart grid management. These algorithms can be freely added, updated, or removed on-the-fly thanks to the auto-update feature of the system. Moreover, to reduce costs and improve scalability, we prove that it is possible to implement our smart meters using only off-the-shelf and inexpensive hardware devices. A digital real-time simulator (i.e., Opal-RT) has been used to assess the capabilities of both the infrastructure and the meter. Our experimental analysis shows that the latency introduced by the data transmission over the Internet is compliant with the limits imposed by the IEC 61850 standard. As a consequence, our architecture does not affect the operational status of the smart grid, making it a viable solution to support the deployment of novel services.

Smart Grid integration plays a crucial role in transitioning towards a climate-neutral future by enabling advanced monitoring, management, and control of renewable energy sources, energy systems, and networks. However, several barriers hinder the integration of these innovative resources and strategies into current power systems due to the inherent complexity of heterogeneous technologies, entities, and actors. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a hybrid multi-model co-simulation infrastructure to analyze innovative Smart Grid scenarios. This infrastructure enables the interconnection of heterogeneous software simulators with real-time hardware simulators within a shared and distributed co-simulation environment, facilitating Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) applications. The capabilities and performance of the proposed infrastructure are evaluated using a smart grid scenario focused on implementing a distribution voltage regulation service delivered by distributed resources installed on a building premise. Additionally, the scenario incorporates a physical smart meter device interconnected in HIL with the simulated building energy management system. The scenario results demonstrate the promising performance and low co-simulation latencies of the proposed infrastructure in coupling software and hardware simulators with HIL applications. Overall, the proposed infrastructure has the potential to assist researchers, system operators, and energy stakeholders in evaluating Smart Grid scenarios and designing, developing, and testing new systems, technologies, and business models.

The aim of this paper is to form an analytical and critical framework to consider the uses of digital platforms in heritage field and practices and to provide methodologies for user profiling based on the identification of local stakeholders and their needs. Within the context of the EU H2020 research project RURITAGE, a resource ecosystem (RRE) of various integrated tools was created for shaping and addressing heritage-led knowledge and bottom-up strategies of local regeneration. More specifically, the RRE was conceived to provide local stakeholders with new methodologies and user-friendly tools based on bottom-up processes for identifying and actioning heritage and territorial features and turning these cultural natural values—as well as the gaps—into opportunities. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the integration of tools in other digital platforms for heritage practices and/or regeneration processes to explore the holistic approach to heritage knowledge and the effectiveness in engaging local stakeholders. In addition, it frames methodologies for local stakeholder and related needs identification. Through this comparative analysis among digital heritage platforms and through user profiling to target the needs of users by using the RRE as a case study, the paper explores the challenge of helping communities to shape a local heritage-led collaborative knowledge supported by integrated and user-friendly digital tools and to activate them in preserving and exploiting their territories and building shared and plural cultural heritage understandings, considering cultural heritage as a social need.

The uprising necessity to lower CO $_{2}$ emissions and reduce energy expenditures fosters the shift toward renewable energy sources. Photovoltaic installations are the most widespread choice of renewable sources as they are relatively cheap and suited even for urban environments due to their small footprint. To reduce the initial investment and maintenance costs, the market is pushing customers to participate in renewable energy community, i.e., groups of customers that share photovoltaic systems to satisfy their energy demand by maximizing self-consumption and minimizing energy withdrawal from the power grid (eventually, they can even sell production surplus). However, the organization of these communities brings new challenges, such as optimizing the facility and estimating its economic impact. This article proposes a framework that combines geographical, meteorological, and demographic information to design optimal photovoltaic systems and evaluate the following economic benefits for the community members. To provide a complete analysis, we also consider the environmental benefit in terms of reducing CO $_{2}$ emissions. Our tests on several real-world case studies prove that our framework facilitates the installation of efficient photovoltaic systems, reducing both the energy withdrawn from the power grid and the CO $_{2}$ emissions.

In this paper, we present a novel distributed software infrastructure to foster new services in smart grids with particular emphasis on supporting self-healing distribution systems. This infrastructure exploits the rising Internet-of-Things paradigms to build and manage an interoperable peer-to-peer network of our prototype smart meters, also presented in this paper. The proposed three-phase smart meter, called 3-SMA, is a low cost and open-source Internet-connected device that provides features for self-configuration. In addition, it selectively run on-board-algorithms for smart grid management depending on its deployment on the distribution network. Finally, we present the experimental results of Hardware-In-the-Loop simulations we performed.