Marco Virgili

Biography

Marco Virgili received a MSc degree in renewable energy systems from Sapienza University of Rome in early 2019, natural continuation of the BSc in energy engineering completed in 2015 in the same study centre. During his studies, he participated to the Erasmus+ programme twice: in Estonia (Tallinn Technical University) and in Spain (Carlos III University of Madrid), where he carried out his MSc thesis work, an exergetic and exergoeconomic analysis of a Concentrated Solar Power plant with a thermal energy storage system, that was recently submitted to be published as a journal paper. This work consisted in the implementation of a modelling code based on real parameters of an existing plant. In August 2019, after an experience in Oracle, he joined Lyra Electronics as a as a Marie-Curie early stage researcher for the European ITN Project PAINLESS. His Ph.D. project will focus on power management and energy storage for portable connection nodes.

Research updates – Period 1

Marco is developing a design methodology for energy autonomous systems. Such methodology comprises of an iterative series of multi-level calculations, alternatively targeting the system as a whole (holistic approach) and each of its four parts individually: power source, storage, load, and electronics. Since this problem presents several degrees of freedom, Marco is using Pareto-based Multi-Objective Optimisation techniques to find the solution that better suits the designer requirements and preferences. The resulting algorithm will be adaptable to several scenarios and will provide the best-fitting solution for an energy-neutral system, based on the criteria defined by the user (cost, weight, duration…).

Contacts

marco@lyraelectronics.com

Supervisor

Pete James, pete@lyraelectronics.com