Smart control of a public building nanogrid: the Italian pilot of the BERLIN project

The Energy Management System plays a key role in nanogrid implementation. Indeed, suitably coordinating the operation of the available energy resources allows for improving the energy performance of the nanogrid, for instance, maximising its self-consumption. The paper describes the test case of the pilot plant installed in one University of Cagliari campus building for the European BERLIN project. The developed algorithm optimises the charging and discharging phases of a Battery Energy Storage System based on the actual measurements and the foreseen estimations of the photovoltaic production and the building electricity consumption. Additional input, such as weather conditions or electricity signal price, can be considered. The tool was initially developed and tested offline using an RTDS simulator in a Software-in-the-Loop configuration and finally uploaded to the Energy Management System for real-time operation. The simulated results show the potential benefits of an optimised operation, the importance of the correct sizing of the nanogrid energy resources and the dependency on the electricity consumption profile. Indeed, the specific features of the pilot site reveal that if the equipment sizing is not optimally tailored and load shaping margins are limited, it could be equivalent to adopting simple battery management logic.