Risk-Averse Decentralized Optimal Scheduling of a Virtual Energy Hub Plant Equipped with Multi Energy Conversion Facilities in Energy Markets

Distributed multi-energy systems, in addition to their advantages, pose significant challenges to future energy networks. One of these challenges is how these systems participate in energy markets. To overcome this issue, this paper introduces a virtual energy hub plant (VEHP) comprised of multiple energy hubs (EHs) to participate in the energy market in a cost-effective manner. Each EH is equipped with multiple distributed energy resources (DERs) in order to supply electrical, heating and cooling loads. Moreover, an integrated demand response (IDR) program and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capable electric vehicles (EVs) are taken into consideration to enhance the flexibility to EHs. The manager of the VEHP participates in the existing day-ahead markets on behalf of EHs after collecting their bids. Since EHs are independent entities, a hybrid model of mobile edge computing system and analytical target cascading theory (MECATC) is proposed to preserve data privacy of EHs. Further, to tackle the uncertainty of renewables, a robust optimization method is applied. Obtained results corroborated the proposed scheduling is efficient and could increase the VEHP’s profit about 21.4% in light of using flexible technologies.