Collaborative Research: Improving Energy Reliability by Co-Optimization Planning for Interdependent Electricity and Natural Gas Infrastructure Systems

电网和天然气网络是美国能源行业两个重要的基础设施系统。 它们是独立设计和管理的。然而，由于许多燃煤发电机的计划退役、可再生能源的深入渗透以及商业上可持续的天然气价格，它们的相互作用在过去五年中加剧了。 因此，为了确保环境友好、可靠且具有成本效益的电力和天然气生产和输送，联合优化这两个系统非常重要。 然而，由于其规模、复杂性和要求/规定，这种协同优化规划问题在建模和计算方面都非常具有挑战性。 为了应对这一关键挑战，该项目将建立分析决策支持模型并设计有效的解决方法，以帮助能源行业制定和计算实际规模的协同优化问题。 协同优化规划的有效性和效益将通过实际的微电网项目和行业合作进行论证和评估。 除了让博士生参与研究并为下一代能源系统规划者和运营研究人员制作教育材料外，还将设计具体项目，让代表性不足的学生利用分析/计算工具来解决实际能源问题。 先前对电力和燃气系统协同优化规划的研究是有限的，同时也经常忽视关键的可靠性考虑、关键的随机/不确定因素或规划问题的长期多阶段性质。 该研究项目将通过以下方式解决这些缺点：（1）研究具有不同时空粒度以及多个规划和运营级别的电力和天然气系统之间的关键相互作用； （2）建立一套同时考虑多阶段规划范围、具有关键随机/不确定因素的按小时顺序运行细节以及长期可靠性和短期灵活性要求的协同优化规划模型； （3）通过先进的分解策略、强近似方法和有效的混合方法，设计和实现高性能计算方法和工具； (4) 通过正在进行的微电网项目和建立的行业联系来验证、演示和推广开发的模型和计算工具。

The electricity grid and the natural gas network are two essential infrastructure systems in the U.S. energy industry. They are designed and managed independently. However, because of the planned retirement of many coal-fired generators, the deeper penetration of renewable energy sources, and the commercially sustainable gas price, their interactions have intensified over the last five years. Hence, in order to ensure environmentally friendly, reliable, and cost-effective electricity and gas production and delivery, it is important to jointly optimize these two systems. However, due to their scales, complexities, and requirements/regulations, such a co-optimization planning problem is very challenging in both modeling and computation aspects. To address this critical challenge, this project will build analytical decision support models and design efficient solution methods to aid the energy industry in formulating and computing practical-scale co-optimization problems. The effectiveness and benefit of co-optimization planning will be demonstrated and evaluated through an actual microgrid project and industrial collaborations. In addition to including doctoral students in research and creating educational materials for the next generation energy system planners and operations researchers, concrete projects will be designed to involve underrepresented students on utilizing analytical/computational tools to address real energy problems. Previous research on co-optimization planning of electricity and gas systems is limited, while also often neglecting critical reliability considerations, key random/uncertain factors, or the long-term multi-stage nature of planning problems. This research project will address these shortcomings by (1) investigating key interactions between electricity and gas systems with different spatial-temporal granularities as well as multiple planning and operation levels; (2) building a set of co-optimization planning models that simultaneously consider the multi-stage planning horizon, the hourly chronological operation details with critical random/uncertain factors, and the requirements of long-term reliability and short-term flexibility; (3) designing and implementing high-performance computational methods and tools through advanced decomposition strategies, strong approximation approaches, and effective hybrid methods; and (4) validating, demonstrating, and promoting the developed models and computational tools through an on-going microgrid project and established industry connections.