Umberto Desideri is Professor, Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction Engineering (DESTEC), University of Pisa, Italy, is a leading expert in thermal machines, energy systems, and clean energy technologies. He has been a Full Professor of Thermal Machines at the University of Pisa since 2014 and served as Head of Department from 2016 to 2020. Professor Umberto Desideri is a Fellow of ASME, a senior editor of Applied Energy, and has held editorial roles in several top international journals. He has coordinated and contributed to numerous major EU and national research projects in hydrogen, fuel cells, renewables, carbon capture, energy storage, and sustainable power generation, while supervising many master's theses and PhD scholars. With rich experience in international collaboration and knowledge dissemination, Professor Desideri has played a key role in advancing research and education related to clean and efficient energy technologies, bridging fundamental research with practical applications. Lorenzo Ferrari is a full-time professor of energy conversion systems at the University of Pisa, Italy. He has over 25 years of research experience in modeling, optimizing, and controlling energy systems. His main research areas include renewable energy, distributed generation, waste heat recovery, hydrogen technology, and energy storage. He has authored more than 200 scientific publications, including journal articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters. Additionally, he has served as a guest editor for numerous special issues and is an associate editor for several academic journals.

• IntroductionPart I: General Overview1. Overview, trends, and future challenges of power production2. Distributed vs. centralized generation: Advantages and drawbacks3. Reflections on technical, economic, and systemic aspects of distributed generationPart II: Variable renewable energy systems4. Small-scale concentrated solar power plants5. Solar photovoltaic power plantsPart III: Programmable renewable energy systems6. Biomass: Digestion7. Biomass—Combustion8. Biomass gasification and pyrolysis9. Hydropower and pumped-hydro energy storage (PHES)10. Small-scale geothermal power plantsPart IV: Fuel-fired power plants11. Micro gas turbines12. Organic Rankine cycle systems for waste heat recovery in thermal power plantsPart V: Integration of small-scale power systems13. Batteries, supercapacitors, and flywheels14. Electric energy storage based on thermomechanical concepts15. Power-to-hydrogen systems16. Power to fuel17. Flow batteriesPart VI: Emerging technologies18. Ocean Energies19. Fuel cells

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