Operational planning and bidding for district heating systems with uncertain renewable energy production

TL;DR

This paper presents a stochastic programming-based planning and bidding method for district heating systems to enhance renewable energy integration, reduce costs, and improve flexibility in electricity markets.

Contribution

It introduces a novel planning approach that explicitly considers uncertainties in RES and market prices, extending virtual power plant bidding strategies to district heating systems.

Findings

Cost reductions achieved through portfolio management.

Enhanced system flexibility and renewable integration.

Insights into the impact of uncertainties on planning.

Abstract

In countries with an extended use of district heating (DH), the integrated operation of DH and power systems can increase the flexibility of the power system achieving a higher integration of renewable energy sources (RES). DH operators can not only provide flexibility to the power system by acting on the electricity market, but also profit from the situation to lower the overall system cost. However, the operational planning and bidding includes several uncertain components at the time of planning: electricity prices as well as heat and power production from RES. In this publication, we propose a planning method that supports DH operators by scheduling the production and creating bids for the day-ahead and balancing electricity markets. The method is based on stochastic programming and extends bidding strategies for virtual power plants to the DH application. The uncertain factors are considered explicitly through scenario generation. We apply our solution approach to a real case study in Denmark and perform an extensive analysis of the production and trading behaviour of the DH system. The analysis provides insights on how DH system can provide regulating power as well as the impact of uncertainties and renewable sources on the planning. Furthermore, the case study shows the benefit in terms of cost reductions from considering a portfolio of units and both markets to adapt to RES production and market states.