Rapid energy flow calculation method for integrated electrical and thermal systems

Abstract

The specific solution methodologies adopted for solving multi-energy flow problems involving integrated energy systems (IESs), such as integrated electrical and thermal energy systems, suffer from a number of deficiencies, such as the choice of iterative initial values when using Newton–Raphson method, poor numerical stability and computational efficiency issues. While the computational complexity of the district heating system model increases dramatically as the scale of the system increases. As such, the development of a new solution algorithm suitable for application to the complex models of large IESs is urgently required. Therefore, this paper proposes a rapid multi-energy flow calculation method for integrated electrical and thermal energy systems. Firstly, an equivalent function of the pipeline pressure drop equation is derived to avoid the iterative and simultaneous solution of crucial pipeline parameters. Secondly, a linear equation is introduced to decouple and transform a typical ring district heating system into a collection of radial district heating systems, which can be rapidly solved with high-precision. Numerical applications of the proposed approach to the Barry Island system verify that the approach provides accurate and highly efficient multi-energy flow calculations.