Frequency regulation with heat pumps using robust MPC with affine policies


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Date

2020-11

Publication Type

Conference Paper

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

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Abstract

The increase in the renewable energy sources connected to the electricity grid has resulted in an increased need for frequency regulation. On the demand side, frequency regulation services can be provided by electrified heating/cooling systems exploiting the energy stored in thermal mass of buildings. To provide such services a first principles model of the building is needed, which is often difficult to obtain in practice. This issue can be overcome by using a buffer storage between the heating/cooling source and the building. Here, we present a solution based on robust optimization to offer frequency regulation reserves with such a system comprising a heat pump, a thermal storage in the form of a warm water buffer tank, and heating demand from a building that needs to be served. We mitigate the problem of limited thermal storage by introducing affine policies on uncertain variables. In three experiments with a real heat pump and warm water buffer storage and an emulated heating demand, we demonstrate that the system can indeed offer reserves and can successfully track a regulation signal while meeting the heating demand at all times.

Publication status

published

Book title

21st IFAC World Congress

Volume

53 (2)

Pages / Article No.

13210 - 13215

Publisher

Elsevier

Event

1st Virtual IFAC World Congress (IFAC-V 2020)

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

Frequency reserves; Robust Model Predictive Control; Frequency regulation; Buildings

Organisational unit

08814 - Smith, Roy (Tit.-Prof.) (ehemalig) / Smith, Roy (Tit.-Prof.) (former) check_circle
03751 - Lygeros, John / Lygeros, John check_circle

Notes

Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) the 21st IFAC World Congress 2020 became the 1st Virtual IFAC World Congress (IFAC-V 2020).

Funding

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