Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The Energy Box needs to know to take into account the preferences of the
consumer. This means that the consumer can decide to exclude it on days when he
does not want to be disturbed, because they should be free to define their own
preferences based on habits.
The counter data are essential to know the profile of the customer.
The aggregator needs to know the total consumption of the consumer, the habits
and the load profile. Once the consumer becomes a part of the aggregator's
portfolio, the aggregator must make an assessment about its potential flexibility in
shifting and modifying the demand.
The birth of so-called buying groups also in this field could change the per-
spective again 'bottom up'.
Infact, in this view of guaranteeing consumers protection, the aggregator should
be an actor that coordinates the offers of all consumers in their exclusive interest,
proposing an aggregate load profile and attaining such as it happens in other goods
purchasing through FTO, without intermediation through third parties, driving
down the final price of the product.
The electrical energy market may occur in a different way:
• bilateral contracts where the distributor enters into a bilateral contract with the
aggregator;
• business to business relationships;
• contract platform with different aggregators;
• market that is open to different buyers, which can be both regulated and
unregulated use aggregators to improve the profit in the purchase of energy in
the energy market.
Another imperative of the intelligent city is the integration that must take place
for all urban functions, in a transversal way, from instrumentations to applications,
from knowledge to skills, that today more than ever are required to be integrated.
Especially for the most vulnerable contexts it still is an uphill climb, but most
cities have for years taken this virtuous path, where skills, systems, and instrumen-
tation contexts, are able to interact continuously to experience innovation in cities.
The integration of mobility systems, on one hand, and integration of systems for
the production of energy, on the other hand, are the pillars of the city of the future,
focused on a low emissions model and on widespread use of renewable energy. It
does not matter whether this is called smart city. The projects
7
undertaken in the
Italian cities thanks to specific loans are the evidence of this, as it will be shown in
this paragraph.
The ICT technology allows to step up to make sure that certain processes are
more immediate.
All the examples of eco-cities, green models, sustainable cities, rely on inte-
grated mobility systems: here the technology plays a key role. The public transport
system should be favoured compared to the private sector, because only proposing
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Some experimental research projects undertaken in Italy since 2012 were selected under the
call Miur Smart Cities and Communities, dedicated to the Italian regions suffering from a delayed
development and where the Gross Regional Product is below 0.75 times the European average.
