Besides providing energy for traction, an electric vehicle battery operates on-board auxiliary systems, among which air conditioning features the highest energy consumption and reduces significantly the driving range. Furthermore, electric vehicles heating needs are typically fulfilled through high-consuming resistors. In this respect, heat pumps promise higher energy efficiency and an increase in all-electric range.\ud \ud This paper analyses a reversible heat pump HVAC system equipped with a regenerative heat exchanger for pre-conditioning and hygrometric comfort improvement, and assesses air-conditioning energy loads and their impact on driving range for a vehicle performing daily commutes in different Italian cities. The dynamic model was set up in a Modelica framework. The overall system integrates component models calibrated against experimental data.\ud \ud Results confirm that air conditioning, consuming up to 32% of the energy required for traction on a daily commute, highly impacts on the all-electric range, which can decrease to 72 km from a base value of 94 km. In heating mode, replacing a resistor with a heat pump reduces consumption by 17–52% depending on geographical context, which proves to be highly effective in particularly demanding summer conditions lessening the driving range decrease up to 6%

Storage technologies are progressively emerging as a key measure to accommodate high shares of intermittent renewables with a view to guarantee their effective integration towards a profound decarbonisation of existing energy systems. This study aims to evaluate to what extent electricity storage can contribute to a significant renewable penetration by absorbing otherwise-curtailed renewable surplus and quantitatively defines the associated costs. Under a Smart Energy System perspective, a variety of future scenarios are defined for the Italian case based on a progressively increasing renewable and storage capacity feeding an ever-larger electrified demand mostly made up of electric vehicles and, to some extent, heat pumps and power-to-gas/liquid technologies. Results are compared in terms of crucial environmental and techno-economic indicators and discussed with respect to storage operating parameters. The outcome of this analysis reveals the remarkable role of electricity storage in increasing system flexibility and reducing, in the range 24–44%, the renewable capacity required to meet a given sustainability target. Nonetheless, such achievements become feasible only under relatively low investment and operating costs, condition that excludes electrochemical storage solutions and privileges low-cost alternatives that at present, however, exist only at a pilot or demonstration scale.

In January 2011, the introduction of high-efficiency cogeneration in Europe radically modified the incentive scheme for combined heat and power (CHP) plants. Since then, the techno-economic feasibility of new cogeneration plants in different areas of application (industry, service, residential, etc.), along with the definition of their optimal operation, have inevitably undergone a radical change. In particular, with reference to the Italian case and according to the most recent ministerial guidelines following the new EU regulation, in the event that cogeneration power plants do not reach an established value in terms of overall efficiency, their operation has to be split into a CHP and a non-CHP portion with incentives proportional to the energy quantities pertaining to the CHP portion only. In the framework of high-efficiency cogeneration, the present study compares different CHP solutions to be coupled with the paper industry that, among all the industrial processes, appears to be the best suited for cogeneration applications. With reference to this particular industrial reality, energy, environmental, and economic performance parameters have been defined, analysed, and compared with the help of GateCycle software. Among the proposed CHP alternatives, results show that gas turbines are the most appropriate technology for paper industry processes.