Environmental Hydraulics Rural Tower for the Energy Production and Accumulation from Renewable Sources

The recent wild growth of renewables has led to relevant effects in terms of land occupation and territory consuming, low energy density per unit, social acceptability questions, distributed generation, non continuous production caused by non-programmable sources such as wind and solar. One solution is the possibility of energy technologies integration in building structures with vertical extension, such as the dove towers, typical of rural Umbria, converted to an integrated system for renewable energy production, storage and supply. This intelligent system could be combined with environmental and meteorological monitoring stations for the energetic demand and weather forecasting. The sources for electric production installed on the tower are photovoltaics, on the head and shaft of the tower, hydropower and possibly, small wind. A tank in the head of the tower allows to have available a hydraulic potential energy, for the turbine at any time, to cover photovoltaic lacks, caused by sudden loss of production, for environmental causes. Conversely, photovoltaic peaks, otherwise unusable, can be used to reload the water from the receiving tank at the foot of the tower, up to the tank in the head. The same underground tank acts as a thermal flywheel to optimize the geothermal heat pumps for the heat and cold production.