Modeling and Evaluating the Energy Hub Effects on a Price Responsive Load

The integration of different energy types and new technological advances in multi-energy infrastructures, enable energy hubs (EH) to supply load demands at a lower cost which may affect the price responsive loads, since the energy could be offered with a lower price at the EH output ports, compared to the upstream energy markets. In this paper a new EH operation model is proposed by which the optimal responsive load modifications against the obtained EH output energy prices as well as the EH schedules are determined. To achieve this goal, a tri-step approach is proposed. At the first step the EH output energy prices are obtained for each energy type in each hour of the scheduling horizon. These energy prices are based on the EH hourly operation and would change as the EH operation changes. At the second step, the optimal responsive load modifications against the obtained EH output energy prices are simulated using the new proposed integrated responsive load model which is capable to model the price responsive loads in multi-energy systems for any type of energy carrier. Since, any changes in load demand (due to its responsiveness) can jeopardize the EH power balance constraint, the obtained EH operation would be infeasible, considering the new modified load pattern. To cope with this interdependency, a new iterative methodology is proposed at the third step in which, the EH optimal operation + EH output energy price determination + responsive load modification is implemented in a loop till the 24 hour aggregated load modification becomes lower than the pre-determined convergence tolerance. Based on the obtained results from solving the proposed methodology through a comprehensive case study, the aggregated supplied energy has been increased by 7.3%, while, the customers payments has reduced by 14.6%. Accordingly, the customer’s satisfaction has increased.