Optimal planning for distributed energy systems with carbon capture: Towards clean, economic, independent prosumers

A low-carbon distributed energy system integrated with solar energy and natural gas-based carbon capture has been developed and analyzed. Considering the environment, economy, and independence, a novel multi-objective planning framework combining three methods has been employed to rationalize the capacity allocation and synergetic scheduling. A real energy-consuming park with multiple loads was taken as a case for hourly simulation, to evaluate the performance and operation of the proposed system. The results indicate that 38.84% of emissions can be avoided compared to the situation without carbon capture through the lifecycle. The natural gas cost and heat sale profit constitute the majority of annual expense and revenue, respectively. The interaction level with power grid is 6.87% at the optimal operation. Furthermore, two economic improvement measures were counted, and three disposals of the captured carbon dioxide were compared. This work may help move distributed energy systems develop towards clean, economic, and independent prosumers.