Heat and power load dispatching considering energy storage of district heating system and electric boilers

As one of promising clean and low-emission energy, wind power is being rapidly developed in China. However, it faces serious problem of wind curtailment, particularly in northeast China, where combined heat and power (CHP) units cover a large proportion of the district heat supply. Due to the inherent strong coupling between the power and the heat load, the operational flexibility of CHP units is severely restricted in winter to meet the heat supply demand, which imparts considerable stress on the wind power connection to the grid. To promote the integration of wind power and enhance the flexibility of CHP units, this paper presented a method of heat and power load dispatching by exploring the energy storage ability of electric heating boilers and district heating systems. The optimization results indicate that the proposed method can integrate additional wind power into the grid and reduce the coal consumption of CHP units over the optimized period. Furthermore, the thermal inertia of a district heating system is found to contribute more to the reduction of coal consumption, whereas the electric heating boilers contribute to lower wind curtailment.