Distributed CHP plants optimized across more electricity markets
The hypothesis of this PhD project was that a transition needs to be initiated from “First Generation distributed CHP” helping only to reduce fuel use through its high efficiency - towards “Next Generation distributed CHP” maintaining this high efficiency but at the same time making (on a macro-economic scale) the integration of fluctuating production from renewable energy sources (RES) less costly by being flexible.
The research focused on investigating investment and daily operation strategies for distributed CHP, when these plants are participating across more whole sale markets and balancing markets, and was focused on the needed interaction between the plants when optimizing market participation.
It was the objective of this PhD project to develop methodologies for the daily operation of distributed CHP plants that are both trading electricity on wholesale markets and providing balancing for the electricity system on a market basis. The methods included how the plants can cooperate if it is needed for market participation as some balancing markets have minimum bid size requirements, and how to optimize participation in both wholesale electricity markets and balancing markets. The methods were developed in cooperation with several distributed CHP plants, where participating in the daily operation was an important approach for developing the methodologies.
It was expected that these improved methods for daily operation of distributed CHP plants will help reduce the societal costs of balancing the electricity system as they will remove more expensive units and reduce the import of balancing. This will in turn facilitate a less costly integration of fluctuating production from RES.
Presentation of the project - held at the 4DH Phd. Fellow seminar 2012
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