Reconfiguration of District Heating Network for Operational Flexibility Enhancement in Power System Unit Commitment

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel unit commitment model that integrates reconfigurable district heating networks to improve power system flexibility, reduce congestion, and better accommodate renewable energy sources.

Contribution

It introduces a combined electricity and reconfigurable heating network model with an auxiliary energy flow variable to enhance computational efficiency.

Findings

Improved congestion management in power systems.

Enhanced wind power integration.

Validated effectiveness through extensive case studies.

Abstract

Massive adoptions of combined heat and power (CHP) units necessitate the coordinated operation of power system and district heating system (DHS). Exploiting the reconfigurable property of district heating networks (DHNs) provides a cost-effective solution to enhance the flexibility of the power system by redistributing heat loads in DHS. In this paper, a unit commitment considering combined electricity and reconfigurable heating network (UC-CERHN) is proposed to coordinate the day-ahead scheduling of power system and DHS. The DHS is formulated as a nonlinear and mixed-integer model with considering the reconfigurable DHN. Also, an auxiliary energy flow variable is introduced in the formed DHS model to make the commitment problem tractable, where the computational burdens are significantly reduced. Extensive case studies are presented to validate the effectiveness of the approximated model and illustrate the potential benefits of the proposed method with respect to congestion management and wind power accommodation. (Corresponding author:Hongbin Sun)