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The conversion of space heating for private households to climate-neutral energy sources is an essential component of the energy transition, as this sector as of 2018 was responsible for 9.4 % of Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions. In addition to reducing demand through better insulation, the use of heat pumps fed with electricity from renewable energy sources, such as on-site photovoltaics (PV) systems, is an important solution approach.
Advanced energy management and control can help to make optimal use of such heating systems. Optimal here can e.g. refer to maximizing self-consumption of self-generated PV power, extended component lifetime or a grid-friendly behavior that avoids load peaks. A powerful method for this is model predictive control (MPC), which calculates optimal schedules for the controllable influence variables based on models of the system dynamics, current measurements of system states and predictions of future external influence parameters.
In this paper, we will discuss three different use cases that show how artificial intelligence can contribute to the realization of such an MPC-based energy management and control system. This will be done using the example of a real inhabited single family home that has provided the necessary data for this purpose and where the methods are implemented and tested. The heating system consists of an air-water heat pump with direct condensation, a thermal stratified storage tank, a pellet burner and a heating rod and provides both heating and hot water. The house generates a significant portion of its electricity needs through a rooftop PV system.
This paper focuses on appropriately measuring the accuracy of forecasts of load behavior and renewable generation in micro-grid operation. Common accuracy measures like the root mean square of the error are often difficult to interpret for system design, as they describe the mean accuracy of the forecast. Micro-grid systems, however, have to be designed to handle also worst case situations. This paper therefore suggests two error measures that are based on the maximum function and that better allow understanding worst case requirements with respect to balancing power and balancing energy supply.
With increasing flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) devices in operation, like the most versatile unified power flow controller (UPFC), the AC/DC transmission flexibility and power system stability have been suffering unprecedented challenge. This paper introduces the user-defined modeling (UDM) method into the UPFC dynamic modeling process, to deal with the challenging requirements of power system operation. This has also been verified using a leading-edge stability analysis software named DSATools TM in the IEEE-39 bus benchmark system. The characteristics of steady-state and dynamic responses are compared and analyzed under different conditions. Furthermore, simulation results prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed UPFC in terms of both the independent regulation of power flow and the improvement of transient stability.
Encapsulant-free N.I.C.E. modules have strong ecological advantages compared to conventional laminated modules but suffer generally from lower electrical performance. Via long-term outdoor monitoring of fullsize industrial modules of both types with identical solar cells, we investigated if the performance difference remains constant over time and which parameters influence its value. After assessing about a full year’s data, two obvious levers for N.I.C.E. optimization are identified: The usage of textured glass and transparent adhesives on the module rear side. Also, the performance loss could be alleviated using tracking systems due to lower AOI values. Our measurements show additionally that N.I.C.E. module surfaces are in average about 2.5°C cooler compared to laminated modules. With these findings, we lay out a roadmap to reduce today’s LIV gap of about 5%rel by different optimizations.
Active participation of industrial enterprises in electricity markets - a generic modeling approach
(2021)
Industrial enterprises represent a significant portion of electricity consumers with the potential of providing demand-side energy flexibility from their production processes and on-site energy assets. Methods are needed for the active and profitable participation of such enterprises in the electricity markets especially with variable prices, where the energy flexibility available in their manufacturing, utility and energy systems can be assessed and quantified. This paper presents a generic model library equipped with optimal control for energy flexibility purposes. The components in the model library represent the different technical units of an industrial enterprise on material, media, and energy flow levels with their process constraints. The paper also presents a case study simulation of a steel-powder manufacturing plant using the model library. Its energy flexibility was assessed when the plant procured its electrical energy at fixed and variable electricity prices. In the simulated case study, flexibility use at dynamic prices resulted in a 6% cost reduction compared to a fixed-price scenario, with battery storage and the manufacturing system making the largest contributions to flexibility.
This paper presents the use of model predictive control (MPC) based approach for peak shaving application of a battery in a Photovoltaic (PV) battery system connected to a rural low voltage gird. The goals of the MPC are to shave the peaks in the PV feed-in and the grid power consumption and at the same time maximize the use of the battery. The benefit to the prosumer is from the maximum use of the self-produced electricity. The benefit to the grid is from the reduced peaks in the PV feed-in and the grid power consumption. This would allow an increase in the PV hosting and the load hosting capacity of the grid.
The paper presents the mathematical formulation of the optimal control problem
along with the cost benefit analysis. The MPC implementation scheme in the
laboratory and experiment results have also been presented. The results show
that the MPC is able to track the deviation in the weather forecast and operate
the battery by solving the optimal control problem to handle this deviation.
The twin concept is increasingly used for optimization tasks in the context of Industry 4.0 and digitization. The twin concept can also help small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to exploit their energy flexibility potential and to achieve added value by appropriate energy marketing. At the same time, this use of flexibility helps to realize a climate-neutral energy supply with high shares of renewable energies. The digital twin reflects real production, power flows and market influences as a computer model, which makes it possible to simulate and optimize on-site interventions and interactions with the energy market without disturbing the real production processes. This paper describes the development of a generic model library that maps flexibility-relevant components and processes of SME, thus simplifying the creation of a digital twin. The paper also includes the development of an experimental twin consisting of SME hardware components and a PLC-based SCADA system. The experimental twin provides a laboratory environment in which the digital twin can be tested, further developed and demonstrated on a laboratory scale. Concrete implementations of such a digital twin and experimental twin are described as examples.
Three real-lab trigeneration microgrids are investigated in non-residential environments (educational, office/administrational, companies/production) with a special focus on domain-specific load characteristics. For accurate load forecasting on such a local level, à priori information on scheduled events have been combined with statistical insight from historical load data (capturing information on not explicitly-known consumer behavior). The load forecasts are then used as data input for (predictive) energy management systems that are implemented in the trigeneration microgrids. In real-world applications, these energy management systems must especially be able to carry out a number of safety and maintenance operations on components such as the battery (e.g. gassing) or CHP unit (e.g. regular test runs). Therefore, energy management systems should combine heuristics with advanced predictive optimization methods. Reducing the effort in IT infrastructure the main and safety relevant management process steps are done on site using a Smart & Local Energy Controller (SLEC) assisted by locally measured signals or operator given information as default and external inputs for any advanced optimization. Heuristic aspects for local fine adjustment of energy flows are presented.
An energy oriented design concept was developed within the research project PHOTOPUR which has the development of a PV powered water cleaning system as main focus. During a wine season Plant Protection Products (PPP) are several times sprayed on plants to protect them of undesired insects and herbs or avoid hazardous fungus
types. A work package of the project partner INES in Offenburg led to a design introducing energy profiling already in the early beginning of a product design. The concept is based on three pillars respecting first the
requirements of the core process making up filtering and cleaning and secondary aspects which run, support, maintain and monitor the system to secure availability and product reliability.
The presented paper shows that the results of the design tools guided the developers to assemble a functional model of the water decontamination unit which was manually tested with its concatenated steps of the water cleaning process.
The PHOTOPUR project aims to develop a photocatalytic process as a type of AOPs (Advanced Oxidation Processes) for the elimination of plant protection products (PPP) of the cleaning water used to wash sprayers. At INES a PV based energy supply for the photocatalytic cleaning system was developed within the framework of two bachelor theses and assembled as a demonstration unit. Then the system was step by step extended with further process automation features and pushed to a remote operating device. The final system is now available as a mobile unit mounted on a lab table. The latest step was the photocatalytic reactor module which completed the first PHOTOPUR prototype. The system is actually undergoing an intensive testing phase with performance checks at the consortium partners. First results give an overview about the successful operation.
In this paper we report on further success of our work to develop a multi-method energy optimization which works with a digital twin concept. The twin concept serves to replicate production processes of different kinds of production companies, including complex energy systems and test market interactions to then use them for model predictive optimizing. The presented work finally reports about the performed flexibility assessment leading to a flexibility audit with a list of measures and the impact of energy optimizations made related to interactions with the local power grid i.e., the exchange node of the low voltage distribution grid. The analysis and continuous exploration of flexibilities as well as the exchange with energy markets require a “guide” leading to continuous optimization with a further tool like the Flexibility Survey and Control Panel helping decision-making processes on the day-ahead horizon for real production plants or the investment planning to improve machinery, staff schedules and production
infrastructure.
Soiling is an important issue in the renewable energy sector since it can result in significant yield losses, especially in regions with higher pollution or dust levels. To mitigate the impact of soiling on photovoltaic (PV) plants, it is essential to regularly monitor and clean the panels, as well as develop accurate soiling predictions that can affect cleaning strategies and enhance the overall performance of PV power plants. This research focuses on the problem of soiling loss in photovoltaic power plants and the potential to improve the accuracy of soiling predictions. The study examines how soiling can affect the efficiency and productivity of the modules and how to measure and predict soiling using machine learning (ML) algorithms. The research includes analyzing real data from large-scale ground-mounted PV sites and comparing different soiling measurement methods. It was observed that there were some deviations in the real soiling loss values compared to the expected values for some projects in southern Spain, thus, the main goal of this work is to develop machine learning models that could predict the soiling more accurately. The developed models have a low mean square error (MSE), indicating the accuracy and suitability of the models to predict the soiling rates. The study also investigates the impact of different cleaning strategies on the performance of PV power plants and provides a powerful application to predict both the soiling and the number of cleaning cycles.
Solar energy plays a central role in the energy transition. Clouds generate locally large fluctuations in the generation output of photovoltaic systems, which is a major problem for energy systems such as microgrids, among others. For an optimal design of a power system, this work analyzed the variability using a spatially distributed sensor network at Stuttgart Airport. It has been shown that the spatial distribution partially reduces the variability of solar radiation. A tool was also developed to estimate the output power of photovoltaic systems using irradiation time series and assumptions about the photovoltaic sites. For days with high fluctuations of the estimated photovoltaic power, different energy system scenarios were investigated. It was found the approach can be used to have a more realistic representation of aggregated PV power taking spatial smoothing into account and that the resulting PV power generation profiles provide a good basis for energy system design considerations like battery sizing.
One of the major challenges impeding the energy transition is the intermittency of solar and wind electricity generation due to their dependency on weather changes. The demand-side energy flexibility contributes considerably to mitigate the energy supply/demand imbalances resulting from external influences such as the weather. As one of the largest electricity consumers, the industrial enterprises present a high demand-side flexibility potential from their production processes and on-site energy assets. In this direction, methods are needed with a focus on enabling the energy flexibility and ensure an active participation of such enterprises in the electricity markets especially with variable prices of electricity. This paper presents a generic model library for an industrial enterprise implemented with optimal control for energy flexibility purposes. The components in the model library represent the typical technical units of an industrial enterprise on material, media, and energy flow levels with their operative constraints. A case study of a plastic manufacturing plant using the generic model library is also presented, in which the results of two simulation with different electricity prices are compared and the behavior of the model can be assessed. The results show that the model provides an optimal scheduling of the manufacturing system according to the variations in the electricity prices, and ensures an optimal control for utilities and energy systems needed for the production.