Buildings-to-Grid Integration with Uncertain Generations: Demand Flexibility vs. Reserve Scheduling

Speaker: Dr. Vahab Rostampour (University of Groningen)

Title:
Buildings-to-Grid Integration with Uncertain Generations: Demand Flexibility vs. Reserve Scheduling

Abstract:
In this talk, I will present a framework to handle the highly fluctuating wind power in the so-called Building-to-Grid (BtG) framework using buildings demand-side flexibility. A stochastic dynamical BtG model is first developed by extending the existing BtG models to integrate wind farm generation and explicitly formulating the interactions between the Transmission System Operator (TSO), Distribution System Operators (DSO), and buildings. Then, a novel unified BtG framework is formulated to handle the uncertain generation (wind) by the demand-side flexibility of individual buildings together with the traditional reserve scheduling, which is in general hard to solve due to the unknown and unbounded distribution of wind power generation. Finally, a tractable robust reformulation together with probabilistic feasibility certificates is provided. An important outcome of this study is that the proposed demand-side flexibility formulation in the BtG framework can be substituted with the traditional reserve scheduling technique in power systems with uncertain generation, without losing stability properties of the power grid and violating the buildings thermal comfort of occupants.

Current work focuses on two main directions: (a) to develop a decentralized control framework using Blockchain to construct a so-called flexibility market to overcome the existing challenge that is to reward nor penalize individual buildings who consumes/produces how much and at what time, as the current solution aggregated data are taken into account rather than individual actions. The decentralized capability of Blockchain allows to implement bottom-up solutions, without the depending on grid operators or waiting for change in policies; (b) to integrate the sociological impact on the demand-side flexibility of individual buildings as an incentive to participate in the proposed BtG framework.