Flexibility and Grid Services from Distributed Multi-energy System

© 2019 Han WangThe energy system is in the transition towards a low carbon future. Large-scale renewable energy resources (RES) and distributed energy resources (DER) are replacing conventional generators, which places great challenges on the tra-ditional energy systems. The intermittent and uncontrollable nature of RES and lack of visibility of DER create more imbalances of supply and demand, which increase the demand for frequency control. On the other hand, the withdrawal of synchronous generators which are traditional grid services providers, further reduces system security. Additional flexibility and new grid services providers need to be sought in order to successfully integrate these emerging technolo-gies while maintaining the reliability and security of the system. Although the significance of consumer participation is seen as the “the heart of the transition”, the flexibility from consumers, DER, and other energy vectors and sectors, is yet untapped. This thesis aims to study the potential and possible ways of exploiting flexibility from such distributed multi-energy sys-tems (DMES), so as to aid the integration of RES. In this context, a comprehen-sive, integrated techno-economic modeling framework is developed, in order to identify, quantify and optimize the flexibility from DMES and develop new rel-evant business cases. This includes, a high-resolution multi-energy demand model to understand the “building block” of the energy system analysis, a mul-ti-markets, multi-services co-optimization model for optimal DMES operation, and a business case assessment model and an investment model for planning DMES under uncertainty to support new business cases. The power of the abovementioned contributions is demonstrated through various realistic case studies