Designing high-share 50% and 100% renewable energy scenarios for Ragusa by sustainable energy toolkit application

Increasing renewable energy production and integrating it into the current energy systems may lead to conditional solutions linked to the context of applications as well as regulatory and techno-socioeconomic issues. The PRISMI Plus toolkit is a powerful tool that can be improved to entail rural areas and energy islands for effective planning of the various renewable energy system scenarios associated with urban contexts. The target Flagship Case Study is Ragusa, a Municipality located in Southern Italy, analyzed with the EnergyPLAN software. The simulation and validation were carried out by the HOMER software. The input dataset was created jointly in collaboration with the Municipality, the updated Sustainable Energy Action Plan was inserted into the PRISMI Plus toolkit, and three transition scenarios based on different renewable energy uses were considered within the post-processing stage. For the baseline scenario, no green energy is considered and the whole electricity consumption is taken into account. In scenarios two and three, 50% and 100% renewable energy shares are secured through optimal investment in Photovoltaic (PV) panels, Wind Turbines (WT), and Battery Energy Storage (BES) technologies. From an economic point of view, it was concluded that the best scenario is the second one thanks to the increased technical capacity of the investment ratio compared with the two other scenarios, showing an energy price reduction of up to 10 %.