Improving operational flexibility of combined heat and power system through numerous thermal controllable residents aggregation

Abstract Thermal controllable residents possess great potential of thermal inertia to improve the system renewable generation accommodation capability. Nevertheless, a high-dimensional optimization problem with huge computational burden emerges if a large number of small thermal controllable residents are modeled individually. In light of this, a polytope-based inner approximate aggregation approach for thermal controllable residents with heterogeneous parameters is proposed, which can unlock the potential operational flexibility offered by numerous small thermal controllable residents and satisfy their various operational constraints. Moreover, a day-ahead economic dispatch framework for combined heat and power systems coordinating with thermal controllable residents’ aggregation and disaggregation processes is proposed to further utilize the thermal controllable residents’ flexibility and promote the wind energy accommodation. The object is to reduce the overall operation cost while ensuring users’ comfort and diversified system operational constraints. Simulation analyses are conducted on the 14-bus electric system and 7-node district heating system, which substantiate that the proposed approach can efficiently improve the system economy and relieve the wind power curtailment through aggregate management of numerous thermal controllable residents.