According to the MUSE GRIDS project, almost all the expected technologies have been installed in Osimo demo site. The remaining technology to be installed is the DC charging station. This asset will enable us to test and validate the bidirectional mode of charging/discharging the electric vehicle in Astea Headquarter. The last updates and preliminary results of the new flexibility assets installation are shown below.

Regarding the AC and DC Charging stations, several results have been successfully achieved:

• EV – EVSE charging process, for the V1G of the DC charging station, according to both DIN SPEC 70121 and ISO 15118-2;
• EVSE confirmed to be able to charge at 50 kW peak. Power delivered between 37 and 41 kW while charging EV.
• EV confirmed to be able to charge in AC mode 3 according to IEC 61851-1. iv) OCPP 1.6 JSON platform and EVSE, including power and current charging profiles have been successful integrated. Finally,
• non-automatic discharge at 10 kW with EV has been successful sustained.

A new Power Management System (PMS), which can manage together the AC and DC charging station, energy meters, PV plants and Astea building loads has been developed. Furthermore, the test of PMS for AC charging station in Genoa has been completed. Figure 2 shown data collection from the PMS test in Genoa.

Control Deployment activities are still on going: actually there is an iterative fine tuning process of the demand prediction tools, predictive control deployment and Smart Controller server set-up.

For what concern the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) installed in CHP-DH plant, Table 1 shows preliminary results for the period October – November 2021: the table highlights the increase of some parameters, namely CHP unit run hour, electric energy produced by CHP unit and thermal energy produced by CHP unit and Heat Pump (abb. HP), comparing their values with the year 2020 (before TES installation). As shown in “Δ” column of the Table 1, this new installation has allowed to increase the electric and thermal energy production of the CHP unit, and therefore also of the heat pump, leading the total efficiency (CHP+TES+HP) from 86,8% to 87,4%.

Table 1

Other important results achieved are the installation of the CHP-DH plant control system, Astea headquarter monitoring system, and the water and energy consumption Infrastructure. The main objectives achieved with the implementation of the new CHP-DH plant control system are: i) upgrade the old and obsolete system with new equipment technologically advanced and currently on the market to ensure new and further plant developments, and faster and more efficient maintainability; ii) have a supervision and control system that integrates all individual substations/sub-parts of the plant; iii) have an open and integrable system with other information systems for the analysis of historical data. The main features of the automation system are: i) continuity of operation in an autonomous and independent way in case of disconnection from the supervision system, to ensure that the controlled system does not suffer disruption; ii) diagnostic verification by sending information and alarms about anomalies or malfunctions to the supervision system.

Thanks to Duferco support and by conducting a detailed analysis of loads, renewable sources available and charging infrastructures architecture, the data monitoring system has been installed in Astea headquarter and Astea sites (see fig. 4). The Control energy system is a software that connects several energy meters and sensors to a cloud based platform. The Informa Platform is able to acquire, register, elaborate and visualize lots of physical quantities, such as electrical, thermal and environmental parameters. This platform provides real-time information about energy usage of the main loads as well as the production from the PV plants installed in Astea sites. The benefits of introducing a new monitoring system are: i) real-time monitoring of the equipment energy consumption; ii) identification of energy efficiency interventions or energy waste; iii) determine, a priori, the cost/benefit ratio of the interventions or corrective measures aimed at reducing energy consumption; iv) analyse the building processes and define the best strategies to increase the level of self-consumption.

Furthermore, to collect data from both district heating (DH) and water (W) networks (from the main water district of Osimo), a real time data acquisition system has been installed. This Monitoring System allows to monitor real-time consumptions of energy and water and visualize some anomalies/water losses if they occur. Thanks to a preliminary detailed analysis (during the commissioning phase), it has been possible to calculate the water and electricity saving, and the percentage of daily remote reading, that are respectively:  5560 m³ (water losses reduction), 7332 kWh (reduction of energy consumption of water pumping stations) and a daily reading percentage of 85%  (DH smart meters) and 73% (for the water ones), respectively. Finally, for the DH and W users, will be available a user app that will allow to i) provide transparency to end users; ii) empower end users to get in touch with Astea more easily and detect leaks at an early stage; iii) save money and time for end users through the possibility of detecting leaks at an early stage; iv) provide end-users with more insights into thermal energy and water use to increase awareness.