Introduction

GFCC is an official Spin Off of University of Genoa (DITEN) and has been an Innovative Start-Up, established in May 2010, following the UNITI project, conducted by the University of Genoa as part of a European Community project, to encourage the technologic innovation and R & D.

GFCC, despite having worked in these early years, mostly on the front of the process and automation industry, has among its objectives to further exploit the strong internal expertise, mainly in the shape of the founding members, to serve as a highly qualified partner for projects, even international inherent in the Smart Grid and Smart City, and, more generally, those related to the world of energy, with particular reference to the Production, Distribution, Efficiency, and Energy Management.

GFCC: activities within the SMART GRID

The contribution of GFCC as part of the Smart Grid is to both tied to the supply is more properly related to the communications and control.

With regard to activities related to the world electric GFCC activities may include:

• Feasibility studies of the integration of distributed generation within a network
• Feasibility studies and the definition of the structure of production / generation for the various networks
• Studies Network "classics": load flow, short circuit and stability, the latter of great importance in the Smart Grid

For the part related to the communication and control activities that GFCC is able to offer are:

• Definition of the logical management of renewable resources integrated with any networks to which they are connected
• Definition of the data exchanges between the different parts of the system and the interface to networks.
• Definition of the communication protocols and possibly the development of ad hoc communication interfaces for the integration of different subsystems
• Development of test bed and demo set up for the test and the test of the communication interfaces and developed control logics

GFCC: activities within the SMART CITIES domain

Activities as part of the Smart City GFCC mainly concern the definition and design of what will be the smart buildings.

The activities may involve two main areas of action:

• The purely engineering domain
• The communications industry

Engineering domain:

• For existing buildings: creation of an "energy check-up" in order to define the energy of the building and identify what are the most energy-intensive users.
• After the results of the energy check-up is possible to draw and design a series of interventions in order to improve the energy efficiency of the same. Installation of inverters, drawing up plans for the use of utilities, system monitoring and supervision, etc.
• For new buildings / planning: planning activities of design of electrical systems and management system loads automatically
• Designing of autonomous systems for the production of energy
• Designing of interface between local production and the electrical system

Communication domain:

• Designing of communication systems inside buildings for the intelligent management of technological systems
• Designing of remote supervision and control systems of technological systems
• Design of the systems interface and integration with third party systems