The EU Green Deal, beginning in 2019, promoted a roadmap for operating the transition to a sustainable EU economy by turning climate issues and environmental challenges into opportunities in all policy areas and making the transition fair and inclusive for all. Focusing on the built environment, the voluntary adoption of rating systems for sustainability assessment is growing, with an increasing market value, and is perceived as a social responsibility both by public administration and by private companies. This paper proposes a framework for shifting from a static sustainability assessment to a digital twin (DT)-based and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled dynamic approach. This new approach allows for a real-time evaluation and control of a wide range of sustainability criteria with a user-centered point of view. A pilot building, namely, the eLUX lab cognitive building in the University of Brescia, was used to test the framework with some sample applications. The educational building accommodates the daily activities of the engineering students by constantly interacting with the sensorized asset monitoring indoor comfort and air quality conditions as well as the energy behavior of the building in order to optimize the trade-off with renewable energy production. The framework is the cornerstone of a methodology exploiting the digital twin approach to support the decision processes related to sustainability through the whole building’s life cycle.

In this paper, we present a conceptual study on a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) architecture for the optimal management of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) owned by prosumers participating in Demand-Side Management (DSM) programs. Compared to classical VPP architectures, which aim to aggregate several DERs dispersed throughout the electrical grid, in the proposed VPP architecture the supervised physical domain is limited to single users, i.e., to single Points of Delivery (PODs) of the distribution network. The VPP architecture is based on a service-oriented approach, where multiple agents cooperate to implement the optimal management of the prosumer’s assets, by also considering different forms of Demand Response (DR) requests. The considered DR schemes range from Price-Based DRs to Event-Based DRs, covering both the normal operating functions and the emergency control requests applied in modern distribution networks. With respect to centralized approaches, in this study the control perspective is moved from the system level to the single prosumer’s level, who is allowed to independently provide flexible power profiles through the aggregation of multiple DERs. A generalized optimization model, formulated as a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem, is also introduced. Such a model is able to compute the optimal scheduling of a prosumer’s assets by considering both DR requests and end-users’ requirements in terms of comfort levels while minimizing the costs.

Nowadays, a huge amount of digital data is frequently changed among different embedded devices over wireless communication technologies. Data security is considered an important parameter for avoiding information loss and preventing cyber-crimes. This research article details the low power high-speed hardware architectures for the efficient field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of the advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm to provide data security. This work does not depend on the Look-Up Table (LUTs) for the implementation the SubBytes and InvSubBytes stages of transformations of the AES encryption and decryption; this new architecture uses combinational logical circuits for implementing SubBytes and InvSubBytes transformation. Due to the elimination of LUTs, unwanted delays are eliminated in this architecture and a subpipelining structure is introduced for improving the speed of the AES algorithm. Here, modified positive polarity reed muller (MPPRM) architecture is inserted to reduce the total hardware requirements, and comparisons are made with different implementations. With MPPRM architecture introduced in SubBytes stages, an efficient mixcolumn and invmixcolumn architecture that is suited to subpipelined round units is added. The performances of the proposed AES-MPPRM architecture is analyzed in terms of number of slice registers, flip flops, number of slice LUTs, number of logical elements, slices, bonded IOB, operating frequency and delay. There are five different AES architectures including LAES, AES-CTR, AES-CFA, AES-BSRD, and AES-EMCBE. The LUT of the AES-MPPRM architecture designed in the Spartan 6 is reduced up to 15.45% when compared to the AES-BSRD.

The LoRaWAN technology, an example of Low Power Wide Area Network, is considered a possible IoT-derived solution for realizing private cellular (single-hop) communications in the industrial domain. However, despite LoRaWAN promises long range and dense environments with many obstacles (as the industrial ones), it may suffer from coverage issue. Additionally, the inverse relationship between data rates and range may be unacceptable for many industrial applications. In this paper, an innovative LoRaWAN range extender (based on an enhanced LoRaWAN node) is described, and its integration in the infrastructure of IIoT-enabled industrial wireless networks is presented. A frame relay strategy is suggested, thus avoiding to trade-off the highest data rates against an increased sensitivity. The feasibility of the solution is formally verified and the features of the realized proof-of-concept prototype, based on commercially available hardware, are discussed. The experimental results, obtained with a purposely designed test bench, show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In particular, the range extender is transparent for legacy LoRaWAN networks as confirmed by correct relaying of uplink and downlink for different types of LoRaWAN message.

The business of distribution system operators is rapidly evolving as the distribution grid is hosting more distributed energy resources. Technology for monitoring, control, and protecting the grid is progressively pervading the lower segment of the network. These changes require a performing communication infrastructure to enable data exchange among the control centers of the grid. The 7th Framework Program European Project INTEGRIS proposes a hybrid infrastructure-based on broadband power line (BPL), Wi-Fi, and fiber optics (FO)-to enable services for grid management. This mix of technologies provides a balanced tradeoff between investments and benefits, meeting most of the requirements of the smart grid. This paper investigates the technologies that could be adopted and describes the experimental assessment performed in an operational environment in Italy. Using this installation, transfer time, time synchronization accuracy, dependability, and throughput are evaluated and analyzed over a long-term campaign. Results show that the FO is the best communication media, able to provide a two-way latency of 3 ms (95 percentile), whereas BPL has a two-way latency of 57 ms (95 percentile -4 hops). Those results confirm that a careful selection of the technologies is required to satisfy requirements of smart grid.

The IEC 61850 standard allows for a structured grid automation system where critical tasks like grid protections, renewable energy sources management, synchronized measurements, and monitoring applications share the communication network. So far, the use of IEC 61850 has been mainly limited to the primary substations, but more interesting could be the coordinated actions between primary and secondary substations in order to quickly react to faults and to reduce service downtimes for final customers. Unfortunately, the communication networks between primary and secondary substations are today only partially deployed. Considering this context, the broadband power line over medium voltage grid (MV-BPL) could be a suitable solution for closing the communication gaps between substations that use IEC 61850. The main objective of this paper is to present the outcomes of the first phase of a project whose final goal is the implementation in real grids of distribution grid automation based on IEC 61850. A new and comprehensive set of experiments on a real (and in service) medium voltage grid in Italy has been designed and carried out. The practicability of IEC 61850 communication over the distribution grid is assessed comparing the time characteristics of the MV-BPL against the transfer time classes of the IEC 61850, determining which IEC 61850 services may be transported over MV-BPL. The experimental long-term analysis highlights that more than 90% of the service requests are transferred on the network with a round-trip time lower than 40 ms even in the case of four hops, a time which is compatible with the IEC 61850 fast automatic interactions on MV grid.