Time-evolution of electricity generation system: criticalities and opportunities

Electricity generation system has faced exceptional change lately because of several aspects: the Electricity Of Everything trend, the introduction of the open electricity market, the spread of distributed energy generation and the penetration of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) in the electricity generation mix. All these factors have contributed to exacerbate the variability of power system operation. Thus, the aim of this work is to present a data analysis of the electricity production at the country level (Italy) by considering the evolution of average and hourly efficiency and environmental indicators from 2015 to 2019. The time-dependent and energy efficiency and environmental indicators can be evaluated thanks to a deep disaggregation of power generation data which allows to obtain the electricity produced hour by hour from each fossil fuel and RESs. The results will show a significant variability of the indicators year by year and hour by hour highlighting the need of an accurate knowledge of these operational parameters in the evaluation of energy conversion systems performance and energy planning.