An integrated project for the management of renewable energy sources in rural areas

The production of energy in the world is obtained mainly from fossil fuels sources which contribute to the increase of the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and to the consequent enhancement of the so called “greenhouse effect”. Italy has a fossil fuel dependency of about 85% with a very low energetic selfsufficiency; this has produced in the last years a growing interest towards the exploitation of renewable energy sources in Italy as well as in the world. The availability of large areas with a low density of population makes the rural areas suitable for the development of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. Decentralised systems for the production and use of renewable energy can be established but this requires the development of tools of land management for a correct planning of the exploitation of renewable energy sources and of the supporting infrastructures. The choice of the location and of the size of the power plants depends on different factors: the availability of the energetic renewable source, the impact on the rural areas, the possibility to overcome the intermittent supply of energy from renewable source such as solar radiation and wind. In the present research a methodology of energy land planning was introduced. The land management methodology was applied to the area of the Treste basin in Abruzzo region, Italy. Energy produced from a photovoltaic power plant was correlated with the electrical energy demand of the rural area, the suitable size of the energy storage useful to overcome the intermittent nature of the solar radiation was evaluated. System using hydrogen and fuel cells for energy storage and the quantity of the energy storage were defined.