Thermal energy storage to minimize cost and improve efficiency of a polygeneration district energy system in a real-time electricity market

Kody M. Powell, Jong Suk Kim, Wesley J. Cole, Kriti Kapoor, Jose L. Mojica, John D. Hedengren and Thomas F. Edgar

Energy, 2016, vol. 113, issue C, 52-63

Abstract: District energy systems can produce low-cost utilities for large energy networks, but can also be a resource for the electric grid by their ability to ramp production or to store thermal energy by responding to real-time market signals. In this work, dynamic optimization exploits the flexibility of thermal energy storage by determining optimal times to store and extract excess energy. This concept is applied to a polygeneration distributed energy system with combined heat and power, district heating, district cooling, and chilled water thermal energy storage. The system is a university campus responsible for meeting the energy needs of tens of thousands of people. The objective for the dynamic optimization problem is to minimize cost over a 24-h period while meeting multiple loads in real time. The paper presents a novel algorithm to solve this dynamic optimization problem with energy storage by decomposing the problem into multiple static mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems. Another innovative feature of this work is the study of a large, complex energy network which includes the interrelations of a wide variety of energy technologies. Results indicate that a cost savings of 16.5% is realized when the system can participate in the wholesale electricity market.

Keywords: Polygeneration; Thermal energy storage; Combined heat and power; Dynamic optimization; District energy systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544216309252
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:113:y:2016:i:c:p:52-63

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.07.009

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 ().