Cost-Sustainability Trade-Off Solutions for the Optimal Planning of Local Integrated Energy Systems from Nanogrids to Communities

Although distributed energy resources (DER) are growing fast, to achieve their expected benefits in the context of local energy systems, it is essential to determine the system configurations in a rational way by selecting the most appropriate energy technologies and the corresponding operation strategies, while taking into account both cost and environmental sustainability aspects. This chapter comprehensively discusses the issue of optimal planning of local integrated energy systems with multiple energy carriers through a multi-objective approach in order to find cost-sustainability trade-off solutions. The optimization models proposed are adaptable and scalable, and thus applicable in contexts going from nanogrids to energy communities. The multi-objective approach proposed allows identifying the best possible trade-off solutions between economic and sustainability objectives on the Pareto frontier, thus providing various design options for planners according to short- and long-run priorities. In the chapter, mathematical models of a wide range of energy technologies, optimization models, and related solution methodologies are presented. Moreover, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed models, several case studies are discussed by involving different scales from a multi-energy nanogrid associated with a single-family house to an integrated energy community with several types of end users.