Coordinated scheduling strategy for an integrated system with concentrating solar power plants and solar prosumers considering thermal interactions and demand flexibilities

Abstract

Solar power is recognized as one of the most crucial energies that contribute to environment protection and decarbonization in the world. In this work, an integrated solar system with concentrating solar power (CSP) plants and solar prosumers who are equipped with photovoltaic and photo-thermal facilities thus able to consume and produce electric and thermal power is studied for facilitating solar energy utilization and improving operational flexibilities of both the CSP plants and solar prosumers. In the integrated system, the CSP plant not only generates electricity but it also serves the thermal load of the solar prosumer through a heat exchanger. In order to investigate the benefits from integrating the CSP plant with solar prosumer, a coordinated stochastic scheduling strategy for the integrated system in the day-ahead (DA) electricity market is proposed considering the thermal interactions between the CSP plant and the solar prosumer as well as the demand flexibilities of electric, thermal and cooling loads of the prosumer. The coordinated scheduling problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model by detailed modelling of each component of the CSP plant and solar prosumer. Simulations and comparisons on various cases demonstrate that, compared with the individual operations, the integration of the CSP plant and solar prosumer can remarkably boost the expected and DA profits and significantly improve the operational flexibilities of the CSP plant and solar prosumer.