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What are the required costs to sustain the electrification of the residential sector? What are the achievable primary energy savings? This paper tries to answer these questions, for the Italian residential sector, by providing coupled energetical and economic evaluations of the electrification pathways. To this end, this paper extends MOIRAE, a bottom-up modelling approach previously proposed by the authors. First, the input data have been upgraded by coupling, using ad-hoc statistical methods, different datasets provided by the Italian Institute of Statistics. Second, to estimate households' time-variation, a socio-demographic model has been developed, validated, and implemented. Third, an economic model of fixed and variable costs for electrical and thermal appliances has been implemented. Subsequently, the modelling approach has been calibrated against detailed consumption data for the different Italian regions and validated against historical data. Finally, MOIRAE has been employed to unveil the electrification pathways with and without household budget constraints, aiming at replacing natural gas, LPG, diesel, and fuel oil energy carriers with electrical energy. For the different scenarios investigated, the changes in primary energy consumptions and the variation of variable and fixed costs have been included to consider both the energetic and the economic point of view. • Time variable and economic evaluations are included within MOIRAE. • The model is calibrated with regionalized data. • The model is validated considering global perspectives in different years. • Electrification pathways of the Italian residential sector are discussed. • The economical burden of decarbonisation pathways is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel bottom-up modeling approach (MOIRAE) to compute the thermal and electrical energy consumptions of the residential sector, which is later applied to the Italian case. First, the structure of the model has been designed and the energy balance models for the electrical and thermal appliances have been described. The energy balance models have been applied to the micro-data offered by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), consisting of a statistical-nationwide-representative sample and providing a comprehensive description of all the Italian households. Subsequently, MOIRAE performance has been assessed considering both global and local validations. On one hand, from a global point of view, MOIRAE has been validated by comparing the numerical outcomes (thermal and electrical energy consumptions) with historical national aggregated data. On the other hand, from a local point of view, MOIRAE has been validated by comparing the numerical outcomes with available micro-data, describing energy expenditure of the different households. Finally, MOIRAE has been employed to elucidate the electrification pathways for the Italian residential sector, aiming at replacing the natural gas, LPG, diesel and fuel oil energy carriers with electrical energy. • MOIRAE, a novel bottom-up model of the Italian residential sector, is presented. • The model is validated considering global and local perspectives. • Electrification pathways of the Italian residential sector are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]