Realization of a smart city platform based on hydrogen from renewable energy and new technologies integration

According to European action plan and national strategies, the focus of proposed work is research in smart cities topic, which is considered an interesting theme in all new programs. Research in smart cities is characterised by different needs concerning different sectors: decrease of polluting emissions (atmospheric and acoustic), improvement of energy efficiency of buildings and systems, reduction of urban traffic (encouraging the use of public transport services), optimization of production and consumption of energy and consequently improvement of life quality. In order to obtain all these results implementation of several parallel and organic actions, which involve various technologies and different specific scientific competence, is needed. The "i-NEXT" project, presented in this paper, was developed in south of Italy under the national call "Smart Cities and Communities and Social Innovation", areas "Renewable Energy and Smart Grid" and "Smart mobility and last mile logistics" and supports innovation in the transport sector and demand and production of energy. Zero emissions vehicles (electric and fuel cell) were realized and infrastructure oriented towards optimized management of energy (hydrogen production from RES and energy storage system) were developed. In addition, an ICT platform works across fields of urban mobility and smart grid through three main operations: Operation 1: Increase of public transports through use of zero emissions vehicles (batteries and fuel cell) to use also for distribution of goods within the last mile and optimization of local public transport (LPT) services. Operation 2: Development of innovative infrastructure based on use of renewable energy, hydrogen and innovative electric storage systems able to support mobility and to improve management of energy produced from RES. Operation 3: Realization of logistic services able to operate on distribution circuits of the goods within last mile, on LTP and on intelligent parking management. Implementation of these actions involved the cities of Capo d'Orlando and Palermo, where results in the field of mobility, logistics, smart buildings, smart grid, energy efficiency, storage and production of electricity from RES were demonstrated.