Techno-economic analysis of hydrogen-based Power-to-power energy systems and their participation in the Italian ancillary services energy market

Nowadays, the framework of renewable energy sources is highly dynamic and constantly evolving, the urgent need of cutting CO2 emissions is pushing humankind to find drastic alternatives to what was the energy paradigm merely a decade ago. In order to be effective for our health, this major shift needs a comprehensive and coordinated set of actions, ranging from a more rational use of the already existent form of energy, passing through the impactful penetration of renewables and alternative energy vectors (e.g. hydrogen-based technologies), to the work on systems’ interoperability, in the attempt of taking out their full potential. Another crucial aspect is the worldwide access to energy. Although the disruptive technological advancement in this field, people who live in remote or with challenging access areas still struggle for resources to power their daily activities. Special conditions need ad hoc technical configurations, such as power-to-power energy systems, which have been identified as the pivotal point of the EU-funded REMOTE project. This work aims at demonstrating the technical and economic validity of such systems in other contexts out of remote areas framework. Indeed, they can provide an outstanding degree of flexibility, which made them particularly suitable also for grid-connected applications. Specifically, it has been investigated the participation of P2P systems to the Italian ancillary services energy market, complying with the official regulations released by the Transmission System Operator, with the purpose of improving safety and reliability of the electricity grid. The results show a deep impact of the natural resources availability as well as of the design choices on the overall system’s profitability, which makes them still not prepared for the adoption on a massive scale. Nevertheless, all the current technological trends are heading towards a raising cooperation between such systems and the electricity grid, in order to increase its resilience, to prepare it for the staggering rise in energy production which await us in the next decades.