Impact of the National Energy and Climate Plan on the Italian Distribution Networks Infrastructure

To achieve the 2030 decarbonization objectives, a rapid growth is expected in distributed generation and demand electrification (e.g., heat pumps, electric vehicles). This will result in significant investments to upgrade the distribution network and the need for a proper planning, able to consider both traditional infrastructure reinforcement and local flexibility. Due to the lack of public detailed information on the network infrastructure and connected users, the limited data available is used to create a synthetic distribution system, which, according to previous analyses, was found to be a reasonable approximation of the actual Italian distribution system. Based on this model, a simplified planning procedure is applied to estimate the necessary investments to reinforce the network and to determine the benefits of smart solutions in scenarios of load and generation growth. The results show that the planning costs depend on the geographical position of new users and that they could be reduced by adopting smart grid solutions, such as on-load tap changers, active and reactive power control of local resources, EVs overnight charging.