Validation of Energy Hub Solutions Through Simulation and Testing in a Lab Environment and Real World

Renewables are currently playing, and they will play in the future as well, a crucial role in achieving the goal of decarbonizing the planet: just to give an idea, the “green” electricity grew by almost 7% in 2020 that has been produced mainly by wind and solar photovoltaics (PVs) (almost 60% of the globally produced electricity). The share of renewables in the global electricity generation reached almost 29% in 2020, a record annual increase of 2% points; moreover, the main path to decarbonize all the “hard-to-abate” sectors is their electrifications and use of efficient energy conversion technologies to provide also thermal and cooling energy by using “green” electricity. However, the way to produce energy has to be changed as well, moving from a “centralized” production to the local one. In this regard, energy hubs (EHs) are currently being developed as an architectural and operational solution for coupling multiple energy carriers at different scales. Indeed, EHs are multigeneration systems involving different energy carriers for different energy needs to meet the energy consumptions optimally by using local energy resources, numerous energy infrastructure, flexibility, and sustainable energy systems. EH is a candidate architecture for the emerging actors in the electricity market such as aggregators and local energy communities. However, they need to be tested and validated with real-world testing to assess their reliability and be more affordable. This chapter presents the application of EH solutions in lab environment and in real world together with an overview of the current deployment of local energy communities at the European level.