Research on the load shifting potential of on-site power plants with byproduct gasholders in steel enterprises under time-of-use power price

Abstract The steel-making industry is one of the largest power consumers in China. To decrease the power purchase as well as increase the reliability of power supply, plenty of on-site power plants (OSPP) are built in steel enterprises. Byproduct gases generated from the steel production process are the main fuels for the OSPPs. Recently, with the implementation of time-of-use (TOU) power price in China, increasing attention has been paid to the collaborative scheduling between OSPPs and gasholders. The overall electricity cost can be reduced through distributing more byproduct gases to the OSPPs during the peak-price period while distributing less byproduct gases to the OSPPs during the valley-price period. In this paper, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) based scheduling model is built to optimise the byproduct gases distribution under TOU power price. The goal is to evaluate the load shifting potential of OSPPs in steel plants, which is seldom discussed in previous studies. Case study is implemented on two steel enterprises with different configuration of OSPPs and the optimal operation strategy is also discussed.