Towards future infrastructures for sustainable multi-energy systems: A review

Integration of different energy infrastructures (heat, electricity and gas vectors) offers great potential for better managing energy sources, reducing consumption and waste as well as enabling a higher share of renewables, lower environmental impact and lower costs. This paper aims at reviewing the state-of-the-art energy system infrastructures in order to provide a comprehensive overview of technologies, operational strategies, modelling aspects and the trends towards integration of heat, electricity and gas infrastructures.

Various technological domains are taken into account, ranging from energy distribution networks (thermal, electric and gas), components for the energy vector conversion (e.g. combined heat and power, power to heat, power to gas, etc.) and energy storage. Furthermore, the aspects related to smart management in energy systems are investigated, such as integration of renewable energy sources and energy recovery systems.