Risk-Based maximization of operation benefit in multi-carrier energy systems

Simultaneous utilization of multiple energy carriers is an increasingly important topic, related to the concept of Energy Hub. Hub managers seek the ways to increase their benefit by procuring consumers load and managing the energy as an intermediary. Hence, decision making to maximize the hub manager benefit attracted lots of attention which the topic of investigation in this paper. The proposed algorithm is designed for medium-term time horizon energy hub in the restructured power system. The energy hub studied includes electricity and gas as its inputs and electricity and heat energy as its outputs. There are a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and furnace units in the hub which are owned by the manger. Electricity is procured using pool market framework and forward contracts and the CHP unit. This energy is procured in the pool with uncertain prices and sold to consumers with fixed tariffs. Therefore, proposed price to customers should maintain the consumers as well as maximize the benefit. Heat energy is also procured by the CHP and furnace units with fixed tariff on gas. Decision making variables are amount of purchased electrical energy from different resources, amount of purchased natural gas as well as the price offered to the consumers in a medium-term time horizon. Electrical load demands of the consumers have uncertainty which is complicates the decision making process. An efficient risk aversion index is selected in order to decrease the uncertainties effect. The effectiveness of the proposed model is investigated in two experiments.