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Energy models: dispatch and market impacts
Hood, Karoline M.
Hood, Karoline M.
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2024
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Abstract
Optimization plays a crucial role across various facets of renewable and clean energy dispatch, mitigates the impacts of individual component failures, and incorporates additional services into dispatch models. Ultimately, these capabilities can address the impacts of design and dispatch models in varying socioeconomic settings. Many energy optimization models incorporate aspects of energy planning such as equipment inventory value, lead time, service costs, and health. Our study involves the lifespan analysis of heat exchangers within a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. We model their thermal profiles, thermal-mechanical stresses, and fatigue using a reduced-order model and a fatigue damage tool. Our findings reveal that the evaporator's lifespan is 17.5 years, and the superheater's lifespan is 11 years, in contrast to an assumed design expectancy of 30 years. The primary cause of the failures is thermal stress in the tubesheets, which is consistent with industry reports. We utilize these updated lifespans to evaluate the gross revenue impact via simulation and optimization, and provide more realistic estimates of lead times than previously invoked. We observe a 3-4% decrease in gross revenue compared to original lifespan estimations. Hidden costs include equipment replacement and the possibility of losing a prior purchase agreement.
Subsequently, our focus shifts to extending a CSP plant dispatch model to illustrate the benefits of incorporating an ancillary service, such as spinning reserves, which aid in maintaining grid reliability by requiring a 10-minute response time for a duration of two hours. The addition of this capability to a CSP plant's operation results in an annual profit increase of 3-7% across three distinct markets compared to its operation in the absence of this type of market.
Lastly, we expand our investigation to assess the health impacts on socially vulnerable communities when the central grid fails. During power outages when microgrids are invoked to maintain power supply, a trade-off emerges between costs and energy demand satisfaction that disproportionately affects vulnerable communities reliant on medical devices. In addition, we evaluate the trade-offs between emissions reductions and costs, noting that more vulnerable communities experience higher mortality rates from particulate matter. When 80% of demand is met during an outage, only approximately 2% of the population is impacted by not having access to power for medical devices; but, meeting demand incurs a significant cost (i.e., a 25% increase in cost for an 80% satisfaction of demand during an outage). Conversely, the cost increases by approximately 1% with a reduction in emissions of 1% and 5%, resulting in a 4-9% reduction in mortality rates.
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