An Integrated Market for Electricity and Natural Gas Systems with Stochastic Power Producers

TL;DR

This paper develops a stochastic optimization model for integrated electricity and natural gas systems, demonstrating how tight coordination enhances renewable integration and operational flexibility.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-stage stochastic programming approach for joint energy system dispatch considering natural gas linepack and market coordination.

Findings

Effective integration improves renewable accommodation

Proper natural gas modeling reveals valuable flexibility

Coordination parameters significantly impact system operation

Abstract

In energy systems with high shares of weather-driven renewable power sources, gas-fired power plants can serve as a back-up technology to ensure security of supply and provide short-term flexibility. Therefore, a tighter coordination between electricity and natural gas networks is foreseen. In this work, we examine different levels of coordination in terms of system integration and time coupling of trading floors. We propose an integrated operational model for electricity and natural gas systems under uncertain power supply by applying two-stage stochastic programming. This formulation co-optimizes day-ahead and real-time dispatch of both energy systems and aims at minimizing the total expected cost. Additionally, two deterministic models, one of an integrated energy system and one that treats the two systems independently, are presented. We utilize a formulation that considers the linepack of the natural gas system, while it results in a tractable mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model. Our analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model in accommodating high shares of renewables and the importance of proper natural gas system modeling in short-term operations to reveal valuable flexibility of the natural gas system. Moreover, we identify the coordination parameters between the two markets and show their impact on the system's operation and dispatch.