Robust design optimization of a photovoltaic-battery-heat pump system with thermal storage under aleatory and epistemic uncertainty

Diederik Coppitters, Ward De Paepe and Francesco Contino

Energy, 2021, vol. 229, issue C

Abstract: Combining photovoltaic arrays with batteries, heat pumps and thermal storage further decarbonizes the heating sector. When evaluating the performance of such systems, the parameters are either fixed, or based on generic ranges, or characterized by precise distributions inferred from limited information. These assumptions result in suboptimal designs, for which the actual performance differs drastically from simulations. To address these limitations, we consider the effects of limited information (epistemic uncertainty) on the natural variability (aleatory uncertainty) through probability-boxes. First, we performed a robust design optimization on the natural variability of the levelized cost of exergy, followed by a sensitivity analysis on the effects of limited information on the optimized designs. This paper provides the least-sensitive designs to natural variability and effective actions to reduce the effects of limited information. The results indicate that a photovoltaic-battery-heat pump configuration achieves higher robustness towards aleatory uncertainty than a photovoltaic-battery-gas boiler configuration. To determine the true-but-unknown performance and robustness of the optimized designs, clarifying the grid electricity contract and adopting specific energy demand profiles are the main actions, while considering generic technology models contributes little to the epistemic uncertainty.

Keywords: Aleatory uncertainty; Epistemic uncertainty; Heat pump; Probability-box; Robust design optimization; Thermal energy storage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221009403
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:229:y:2021:i:c:s0360544221009403

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.120692

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().