Colloquia

Samenvatting

In the transition towards a net-zero energy system, grid congestion is an increasingly pressing issue. Companies that require a new or larger connection to the grid are put on waiting lists reaching up to ten years. A Smart Energy Hub (SEH) offers a potential solution to mitigating grid congestion by enabling companies to operate within a newly defined, collective transport capacity through an administrative arrangement. By leveraging the flexibility of the participating companies, the aggregated power profile can be adjusted, leading to a reduction in grid congestion. To assess whether a collaboration would be beneficial for a group of companies, a collective SEH optimization framework is proposed. This framework uses standardized power profiles published by grid operator Liander, which are assigned and scaled to reflect the consumption of the participating companies in the case study. This process circumvents the need for sharing privacy-sensitive energy profiles, making the tool particularly suitable for the exploratory phase of SEH implementation.

The flexibility of each archetype is subdivided into low-flexibility (LF) and high-flexibility (HF) power, both characterized by a flexibility factor derived from literature. This flexibility is subsequently used to minimize collective power peaks within an SEH using the optimization framework. The performance is evaluated using multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the three scenarios of a case study: the original (benchmark) situation, the optimization on an individual company level, and collective optimization akin to an operational SEH. When these companies are to collaborate, the violation of the contracted power would be decreased in both the total amount and the frequency compared to both the benchmark and the optimization on a company level, hence lowering grid congestion. While the cost and CO2 emissions associated with the changes in the aggregated power profile are negligible, the total cost of the mains connection is decreased. However, the main drawback is that the future growth potential is decreased due to a lower combined contracted transport power.