The Urban Solar Frontier: Unleashing the Power of Every European Roof

Abstract: The global shift toward decentralized renewable energy is redefining national strategies, particularly in regions leading the transition, such as Europe. Despite ambitious targets and the rapid expansion of utility-scale plants, Rooftop Photovoltaic (RPV) and Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) systems are now a global reality, with nearly 900GW of installed capacity. However, these systems remain significantly underutilized relative to the vast surface area available in urban environments.

This lecture addresses the fundamental issues and theories of photovoltaic energy conversion, current technologies, market trends, and pricing. It specifically examines the design of BIPV and RPV systems in dense urban settings, describing advanced GIS-based frameworks for estimating solar potential. By integrating 3D digital surface models with TMY meteorological data, the proposed approach accounts for complex element-to-element intershading throughout the year. Beyond standard metrics, new indices for 'uniformity' and 'dimensionless exposure' are introduced to provide a nuanced profile of rooftop performance, energy yield, and economic profitability. This robust, transferable methodology establishes the foundation for future national solar cadastres and provides a data-driven roadmap for urban renewable energy policy.

Balancing Crops Shading and Power Generation in Agrivoltaics: an Optimal Control Perspective 

Abstract: Agrivoltaic systems - integrating agriculture with photovoltaic energy production - allow land to simultaneously generate food and electricity. Nonetheless, solar panels may limit the light available to crops, potentially impacting yields. This presentation introduces a new optimization-based framework that adaptively balances crop light requirements with energy generation. The approach reformulates the complex plant–panel interactions into a tractable optimization model, offering guaranteed approximation accuracy and enhanced computational scalability. Using real-world data from an agrivoltaic installation in Southern Italy, we show how this method can improve both agricultural output and renewable energy performance, supporting the development of more efficient, data-driven agrivoltaic solutions.

Energy Management Systems for Sustainable Energy Communities: optimisation models and real-time control 

Abstract: Energy Communities (ECs) are emerging as a strategic pillar of the energy transition, enabling local energy sharing, reducing dependence on the grid, and creating new economic opportunities for prosumers and consumers. Different kinds of ECs exist (Renewable ECs, Citizens ECs, Rural ECs, ECs for green ports and industrial plants, etc.) for which similar methodological approaches can be applied. Their effective deployment, however, requires advanced management strategies capable of coordinating multiple participants with different objectives, market signals, and regulatory constraints in real time.

This keynote presents an integrated perspective on ECs management based on bilevel optimization, where the Energy Community Manager operates at the upper level to maximize shared energy and collective economic benefits, while individual participants act at the lower level to minimize their own energy costs. Different mathematical reformulations are discussed, including KKT-based single-level reductions and alternative MILP, NLP, and dual-based solution strategies, with attention to scalability, computational efficiency, and suitability for online operation. Moreover, different possible kinds of technologies (production, storage, distribution) will be discussed from an overall multi-energy systems perspective and in relation to sustainability criteria.Particular emphasis is placed on the practical implementation of these methods in realistic settings and test beds, including the participation in demand response programs and the impact of pricing strategies and incentive mechanisms on community performance. The talk also highlights the transition from centralized optimization models to lightweight, embedded-oriented energy community management frameworks deployable on low-power hardware, showing that advanced optimization can be made compatible with real-time and decentralized operation. Overall, the keynote will show how optimization, control, and embedded computation can jointly unlock the full technical and economic potential of ECs, making them a concrete enabler of a more flexible, resilient, and sustainable power system.

LP-WAN applications for smart agriculture

Abstract: Nowadays agriculture needs continuous, dense and reliable control of crop and soil conditions. Plants phenological status, crop exposition to climate change and soil water content must be analysed regularly, to discipline nutrients dosage, to program disease prevention and treatment, to establish watering recipes. To this, it is fundamental to identify communication solutions capable to overcome the digital divide in rural areas, even the more remote ones. LP-WAN technology, especially the one based on LoRa chipsets and LoRAWAN networks, offer robust connections with minimal energy requirements. The contribution will analyse the last achievements and the new perspectives.

Distributed Control for Cyber-Physical Energy Systems: Enabling Resilient Rural Microgrids 

Abstract: The application of distributed control theory and multi-agent system modelling to next-generation smart power networks frames them as cyber-physical energy systems within a networked control paradigm. Particular attention is given to rural and remote microgrids, where decentralized architectures enable reliable, resilient, and sustainable energy access. Through neighbour-to-neighbour information exchange, cooperative control strategies are emerging as a flexible, reliable, and scalable alternative to centralized approaches, especially in contexts with limited infrastructure and high renewable penetration. Rural microgrids, often operating in islanded or weakly interconnected conditions, benefit from improved scalability, fault tolerance, and adaptability to local generation and demand variability. However, communication networks introduce challenges such as time delays, cyber-attacks, and inefficient use of communication and computational resources. Moreover, digital implementations of distributed controllers require a shift from continuous-time to sampled-data control, where sensing, actuation, and communication occur at discrete-time instants. Within this framework, the keynote presents recent advances in distributed control for cyber-physical energy systems, focusing on microgrid applications, Lyapunov-Krasovskii-based stability guarantees, and real-time experimental validations.