Increasing flexibility of combined heat and power plant (CHP) operations using heating grid dynamics

Abstract:
With raising share of renewables in electric power grids, flexibility of other generation resources is a key factor for safe, stable and economic operations. Combined heat and power plants (CHPs) are traditionally run driven by the heat demand. To allow CHPs to react flexibly to electric grid and markets, a storage of thermal energy is needed. The dynamics of a heating grid can be used as such storage, avoiding investments into dedicated thermal storage tanks. A recently developed method allows to use this storage without a detailed physical model of the heating grid. In this work this new method is presented and used to evaluate its economic potential using measurement data from a German heating grid in a detailed case study. The results show that additional cost savings of up to 6% are achieved, when heating grid dynamics are considered in CHP operations scheduling.