Designing Multi-Energy Systems

Abstract

Clear strategies that address all energy sectors, not just electricity, are required to achieve a sustainable and reliable energy system. Integrating multiple energy carriers (in this research electricity, heating and gas) in a so-called multi-energy system (MES) can represent a great opportunity for system improvements. This research builds upon an existing model for designing MES, coupling both temporal and geographical constraints for the investment planning of three energy networks. Large problem instances and complicating substructures of the model result in excessive computing times. This research therefore focuses on improving computation times of finding (near) optimal solutions. First, within a theoretical framework, the computational complexity of the model is investigated for insight into the worst-case performance of algorithms and interesting substructures. Second, in a practical setting, an empirical research with different problem instances will be performed, to investigate the efficiency of different methods within the branch-and-cut algorithm, such as parameter adjustments for the solver, the consideration of an existing network and the implementation of valid inequalities. Third, decomposition methods are compared. It appears that, overall, the MIP solver with the additional valid inequalities performs best.