Flexibility Evaluation of Industrial Steam Systems Using Adjustable Robust Optimization

The increasing penetration of renewable energy leads to rising demands for flexibility in power systems. In-dustries with onsite generators can provide flexibility to power systems through electricity generation regulations. When used for supporting power systems, industries need to quantify their flexibility first, particularly for participating in ancillary service markets. To address these requirements, this paper proposes a novel evaluation solution method for the flexibility onsite gen-eration of industries considering the energy demand constraints of industrial processes. Considering uncertain steam states in industrial processes, an adjustable robust optimization method is proposed to characterize the flexibility boundaries for upward and downward regulations. The proposed method is applied to the industrial steam system of a real paper mill. The results show that this framework can approximate the flexibility boundaries of the system considering uncertainties in the steam states. It is also found that the cost of flexibility keeps varying as steam demand changes.