A comprehensive framework for optimal planning of competing energy hubs based on the game theory

Abstract

Abstract The concept of energy hub has been used recently to study multi-carrier energy systems. A model has been proposed in this paper for planning multi-hub energy system considering the competition between the hubs. The energy hubs are interconnected by a power grid. Hubs supply the demands for heat and electricity using various technologies and access to several energy carriers. To this aim, load zones were used to incorporate demand profiles for both heat and electricity in the different seasons of the year. Supplying the demand most cost-effectively is the objective function of each hub. These hubs select the optimum strategy separately in a competitive space. The power grid is owned by Regional Transmission Operator (RTO) which is operated based on DC Power Flow. Moreover, elastic electricity demand is also addressed for the market in each region. The proposed model formulate the problem as a Cournot Oligopoly game using Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions to consider the objective function of the hubs as well as that of RTO. Once solved, yearly capacity-building is determined as well as the flow of energy carriers for each technology, regional electricity prices and the amounts of electricity transmission between regions for each load zone and each hub. The proposed model has been applied to a test system and applicability of the proposed model was verified. Finally, the results of competitive modeling were compared with those of the centralized modeling.