Models and Methods for Sustainable Road Tunnels Operating as Microgrid and RES Energy Community

Supplying the electric loads of road tunnels is a complex problem that should consider safety and sustainability aspects. This position paper presents an ongoing project on the development of models and methods for estimating the technical and economic viability of energy Autonomous and Productive Road Tunnels (APROTs), operating according to a Microgrid (MG) paradigm that integrates local distributed energy resources (i.e., renewable generation systems and a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)) with sustainability and energy efficiency targets. The overall methodology will include a bidimensional model to assess the Energy Consumption (EC) and the levels of Performance (PE) of the tunnel, allowing the identification of the tunnels suitable to be managed as APROTs. For these tunnels, advanced long-term forecasting systems will be developed to assess the producibility of the renewable generation units and to enable the optimal sizing of the APROT devices in a stochastic optimization framework. Eventually, an Energy Management System (EMS) will be implemented to schedule the BESS setpoints to optimize the APROT operation costs, based on short-term forecasts of the renewable generation, of the loads, and of the energy price.