Investigating the diffusion of renewable energy technologies in Italy

innovation diffusion, mathematical models, renewable energy technologies, parameter estimation.

In this paper we investigate the diffusion process of renewable energy technology in Italy through the study and estimation of different mathematical models proposed in the literature. Basing the estimation on historical data of the installed power, we find that the pioneer of new product diffusion models, the Bass model, is appropriate to represent the photovoltaic technology diffusion process, whereas after a comparison among the most important models discussed in the literature, we conclude that the Non-Uniform Influence (NUI) model describes the wind technology diffusion process in the most accurate way. The NUI model is also used as a prediction instrument for the diffusion dynamics of wind technology. In fact, we fixed the level of installed power to reach at a future data, and simulated the diffusion curve to find how many years are needed to get to the target.