Energy Hubs and Polygeneration Systems: A Social Network Analysis

Enforced by sustainability concerns, the energy industry has been through a transformation from a conventional centralized and inflexible fossil-fuel-based system to decentralized, cleaner, and flexible systems. The concept of an energy hub and all relevant terms such as “polygeneration,” “microgrid,” “mesogrid,” “nanogrid,” “energy internet,” “community energy network,” “social energy network,” and “virtual power plant” are introduced to address decentralized energy systems, which can utilize diverse resources and technologies in the vicinity for energy generation and storage to supply sustainable, reliable, and affordable sources of energy. This study investigates the evolutionary trends of major research topics in this field by exploring the co-occurrence network of keywords associated with publications. The analysis is based on over 3000 related publications from 1962 to 2017. The term “polystorage” is also introduced as an identical to “polygeneration” in the context of energy storage diversification.