Electrification of Heat Demand: An Estimation of the Impact on the Future Italian Energy System

The aim is to assess the impact of the civil sector’s heat demand electrification on the entire energy system, in the Italian case study. The hourly heat demand profiles are estimated at census cells level using the BIN method or monitoring data. Profiles are used as input in the oemof-based NEMeSI model employed to optimize both the capacity expansion of power generation and the operation of the power system in 2030, with hourly temporal resolution and NUTS2 spatial detail, in three heat demand electrification scenarios. The model considers the availability of sources, the import and export profiles, and the limit on renewable sources. The results show that no additional capacity of renewable energy is driven by the increasing electrification in fact the installed capacity remains the same in the three scenarios (97GW of photovoltaic and 33GW of wind turbines). The increase of power demand results in a reduction of overgeneration (48.6TWh to 38.3TWh), an increase in installed batteries (40.6GWh to 115.3GWh) and in CHP (+10%) and CCPP systems (+16%). The results show a slight increase of natural gas in electricity generation (+5.2TWh) respect to a high reduction in its use in civil sector’s heat demand (-68.5TWh).