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This paper presents a numerical approach based on the finite element method for the estimation of AC interference on buried metallic pipelines sharing the same right-of-way of power transmission lines in presence of mitigation wires. The proposed approach relies on a hybrid technique in order to reduce the mesh size and, in turn, the computational time. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated with application to a standard interference configuration. Some tests were performed in order to assess how the position and material of the mitigation wires affect the induced current on a buried metallic pipeline.

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In 2016 a new law for public contract was approved in Italy also aimed at improving the national and local sustainable transport planning. The Italian government has also adopted new 'Guidelines for assessment the Investment Projects' derived from the European Commission indications about the external costs of transport estimation in the Cost-Benefit Analysis. Starting from these considerations, the aim of this paper was to propose a new methodology, in compliance with the Italian guidelines, for the estimation of the external costs of transport in a Cost-Benefit Analysis. The application case study was a new tourist railway line in Lazio Region. The external costs estimated were the variations in term of: climate change, air pollution, noises, congestion and road accident. Estimations results allow to conclude that there is a social convenience of this new rail infrastructure because: i) a positive Net Present Value equal to about 27 M€ was estimated; ii) an Internal Rate of Return much greater than the discount rate (9% vs. 3%) was observed; iii) a benefit/cost ratio equal to 2 and a PayBack Period of 15 years was quantified. The overall amount (in monetary value) of external costs saved is about 360 thousand Euros/year (2016 prices) with a cumulative value, for all the life-period considered (30 years), equal to 11 million of Euros.

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Summary Solving the energy and climate challenges ahead will require introducing massive amounts of clean energy such as renewable energy (RE) sources, in particular, in urban areas as these dominate the energy use and emissions. Variable RE sources such as solar and wind are interesting mainstream energy options in this context. However, their use may cause major problems with the power system calling for more advanced strategies to enable optimal integration and bridging of the new and old energy system. Here, we demonstrate the usefulness of electricity-to-thermal conversion and RE linked to e-mobility strategies to increase the RE share much beyond the traditional self-use limit of power. For example, the Metropolitan Helsinki (Finland) region could in this way derive up to 60% of its electricity and 30% of its heat from wind power, without any major energy storage arrangements. In sunny climates, the use of photovoltaics could be increased by a factor of 2–3 over the self-use limit of power through such strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This paper deals with a procedure capable to build the scenario tree associated with a parking lot equipped with several bidirectional charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles (EVs). The scenario tree is conceived to be implemented in multistage stochastic optimization models for day-Ahead energy management systems of microgrids or, more in general, power distribution networks. Specific operating rules relevant to the initial energy available in the cars entering the parking lot are defined, as well as the other typical constraints (such as maximum number of available charging stations, size of the EVs batteries, and power ratings of charging stations). Moreover, the model reproduces also the coupling between the operation of the parking lot with the power production of a photovoltaic unit. The tree generation procedure at first generates a number of equiprobable scenarios by using day-Ahead forecasts and the probability distributions characterizing the expected deviations with respect to the forecasts; then similar scenarios are grouped on the basis of the chosen criteria and of the number of stages. A specific procedure is finally proposed and applied in order to guarantee the existence of feasible solutions.