Optimal operation for integrated electricity-heat system with improved heat pump and storage model to enhance local energy utilization

As the need for clean energy increases, massive distributed energy resources are deployed, strengthening the interdependence of multi-carrier energy systems. This has raised concerns on the electricity-heat system’s co-operation for lower operation costs, higher energy efficiency, and higher flexibility. This paper discusses the co-operation of integrated electricity-heat system. In the proposed model, network constraints in both systems are considered to guarantee system operations’ security: The branch flow model is utilized to describe the electricity network, while a convexified model considering variable mass flow and temperature dynamics is adopted to describe the heat network. Additionally, novel models for heat pumps and the stratified water tank are proposed to represent the physical system more accurately. Finally, to preserve the information privacy of separate systems, a distributed algorithm is proposed based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Numerical studies show that the co-operation could provide a more economical and reliable solution than the decoupled operation of the heat network and electricity network. Moreover, the ADMM-based algorithm could derive solutions very close to the optimum provided by centralized optimization.