(294c) Scenario Reduction for Power System Planning and Scheduling Problems Under Energy-Water Nexus Considerations

Rapid population and welfare growth put huge stresses on natural recourses by increasing the demand for energy and water [1]. As 15% of global water use is appropriated for energy production and water treatment facilities are energy intensive, the need to create decision-making strategies that exploit the Energy-Water Nexus (EW-N) between power generating devices and water is apparent [2]. Furthermore, there are long-term environmental concerns for electrical power generated from non-renewable feedstocks due to negative environmental impacts. Transitioning to renewable generators is challenging, since the power generated from solar and wind farms is subject to stochastic feedstock intermittency, and leads to a complex capacity expansion problem [3, 4].

To this end, we expand our previous work on long-term capacity planning and operational scheduling of power generating systems in the context of EW-N [5]. The developed model is represented as a stochastic mixed-integer program that allows for the development of additional power generators and energy storage devices over a set of regions in the planning problem as well as operational constraints in the scheduling problem [5]. In this work, we introduce a new approach that reduces: (i) the large number of scenarios needed to accurately capture the variability in solar irradiance, wind speed, energy demands, and water availability and (ii) the temporal length of the scheduling problem, while still allowing for hourly, weekly, and seasonal energy demand profiles as well as hourly and seasonal renewable feedstock variability. The proposed framework is illustrated through the use of a case study covering the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region of Texas.

References:

[1] Nie, Y., Avraamidou, S., Xiao, X., Pistikopoulos, E. N., Li, J., Zeng, Y., Song, F., Yu, J., Zhu, M. (2019). A Food-Energy-Water Nexus approach for land use optimization. Science of The Total Environment, 659, 7-19.

[2] Garcia, D. J., & You, F. (2016). The water-energy-food nexus and process systems engineering: a new focus. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 91, 49-67.

[3] Mallapragada, D. S., Papageorgiou, D. J., Venkatesh, A., Lara, C. L., & Grossmann, I. E. (2018). Impact of model resolution on scenario outcomes for electricity sector system expansion. Energy, 163, 1231-1244.

[4] Albadi, M. H., & El-Saadany, E. F. (2010). Overview of wind power intermittency impacts on power systems. Electric power systems research, 80(6), 627-632.

[5] Allen, R. C., Nie, Y., Avraamidou, S., & Pistikopoulos, E. N. (2019). Infrastructure planning and operational scheduling for power generating systems: an energy-water nexus approach. Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Design (FOCAPD 2019). Accepted Manuscript.