Test Specification TC12.TS02

TC12.TS02

TC12

Electric Boiler Activation for Excess Power Consumption with Model-predictive Control

This test is conceptionally similar to TC12.TS01. The difference is that for planning the operation of the storage units and the electric heaters a predictive controller is used. The aim of the controller is to minimize negative residual load of the electric network. To enable this planning, negative residual load in the electric as well as heat demand in the heat network need to be known/predicted. This test assumes perfect knowledge of these time-series data and, thus, does not focus on the quality of predictions.

The controller uses heat demand and excess power predictions together with current storage temperatures, electric boiler power consumption and heat discharge to calculate new setpoints for the electric boilers. The district heating network/electric boiler simulation send actual power consumption of electric boilers to electric network simulation.

This test case uses an advanced model-predictive control scheme for activating the electric boilers and storage units. A detailed description of the controller scheme is given in:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2020.118540

same as TC12.TS01

• Qdem … predicted heat demand
• Pex … predicted power demand
• otherwise same as TC12.TS01

The electric boilers are activated with the help of a predictive control approach, which enables a planning of discharging and charging the thermal storage units with regards to excess power availability. For instance, thermal storages can be emptied before times with high excess power but low heat demand and thus makes the use of the electric heater still possible.

This test needs to run for an entire year to cover the daily/seasonal variations of loads/generators and the impact of the predictive control, as it usually has planning horizons of multiple hours/days.

same as TC12.TS01

• Every 15 minutes the electric boiler controllers receive current heat generation and heat discharge from respective electric boilers together with predicted residual load of electric network and heat demand of district heating network. Thus, electric boilers receive new setpoints for heat generation & heat discharge from model predictive controllers.
• Every 15 minutes electric network receives current power consumption from electric boilers
• Otherwise subsystems are independent from each other.

None

same as TC12.TS01

None

same as TC12.TS01