Development of methods and components for future industrial energy supply with flexibility

Abstract

The importance of flexibility from industrial sources is increasing with the transformation of the energy system and industrial production. The need for industrial energy supply systems to become more sustainable is also rising. This work concentrates on integrating flexible and innovative energy supply technologies into industrial energy systems. Mixed-integer linear programming is applied and extended by new formulations to achieve this aim.This work presents techno-economic analyses of flexible energy supply for industrial use cases under various conditions. With its energy-intensive production process, the paper and board manufacturing industry is the basis for these analyses. The work answers various questions considering different levels of the industrial energy system as well as site-independent energy supply levels. An overview of how flexibility can be integrated into decision variables, constraints, and the objective function of optimization problems is given. Operational aspects such as rolling time horizons for ongoing adaptation to fluctuating framework conditions are considered. Long-term structural measures such as sector coupling or independence from individual raw materials are also considered. The economic analysis of the calculated results quantifies the economic challenges that a transformation of the energy system entails.In summary, the methods developed and demonstrated in this work contribute to a comprehensive decision-making basis for determining how the energy supply in industrial plants will develop in the future transformation process.