Lorenzo Nigro, Ph.D. student in Information Technology of the Systems and Control section at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – Politecnico di Milano, has won the IEEE Italy Section 2023 Master Thesis Award on New Challenges for Energy and Industry - Sustainability for his M.Sc. thesis "Hierarchical predictive control of networked multi-energy systems".
The thesis work, carried out with the supervision of Alessio La Bella and Riccardo Scattolini and in collaboration with Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico – RSE, proposes an innovative hierarchical control structure that enables the management of networked multi-energy systems, i.e., systems where different energy vectors (thermal, electrical and/or gas) interact and exchange energy in an optimal way. The thesis study demonstrates that the optimal control of these systems allows them to significantly increase the energy efficiency, minimize operating costs, and foster the integration of renewable resources.
The thesis also proposes an algorithm that exploits game theory to equally distribute the profit obtained among the operators involved in the multi-energy system, so that each of them benefits from the cooperation with the other systems.
The award was conferred to Lorenzo Nigro during the IEEE Day, held on October 3, 2023.