Urban regeneration plans: Bridging the gap between planning and design energy districts

District regeneration plans introduce demographic and land use changes that influence their energy balance, modifying electricity and heating/cooling demand. Traditional approaches see urban regeneration projects as independent processes with respect to the energy planning ones, ignoring the European Union targets to move towards the energy transition. Smart energy district approach allows to better solutions from the thermodynamic and economic point of view, and to integrate renewable energy sources, which by their nature are ‘fluctuating,’ with the energy demands using a data centre to menage the energy flows. To evaluate the benefits that a district could obtain when integrating energy planning in regeneration plans, the authors analyse the effects of a different approach to the urban design that goes beyond the traditional tasks of designing districts’ spatial aspects and propose a consistent technical analysis during the decision-making process. To do this, after defining strategic targets related to energy and resource issues, the authors implement different scenarios, evaluating the most suitable technologies that can be integrated in the area. The process of modelling and simulating the energy system hour by hour enables to identify the synergies among the energy sectors. This is done by creating models using different energy tools, as the ones used in this work. The research work analyses a real case for a possible process of urban regeneration, of former industrial area in a district located in the city of Naples, through retrofit and re-use of existing buildings, the construction of new ones and the implementation of smart infrastructures. The overall goal of this work is to present and evaluate different development configuration of a smart energy district when going from the planning to the design phase. The analysed system is designed for matching the power and thermal flow rate demands of the district considered, including the power demand of electric vehicles charging stations, as well as the energy for space heating and cooling. A technoeconomic analysis of three technical alternatives has been implemented, each one characterized by a different energy mix, allowing to verify the most suitable option between the individual and central heating and cooling supply. The work considers all the legislative constrains related to the introduction of the Renewable Energy Sources, required for the construction of new buildings in Italy.