Industrial Multi-Energy Communities as Grid-Connected Microgrids : Understanding the Role of Asymmetric Grid-Charge Regulation

Titelangaben

Dautzenberg, Alexander ; Kaiser, Matthias ; Weibelzahl, Martin ; Weissflog, Jan:
Industrial Multi-Energy Communities as Grid-Connected Microgrids : Understanding the Role of Asymmetric Grid-Charge Regulation.
In: Journal of Cleaner Production. Bd. 466 (2024) . - 142738.
ISSN 0959-6526
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.142738

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Abstract

The industrial sector is currently the leading emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide. Lowering emissions, the collaborative use of energy and storage technologies in Industrial Energy Communities (IEC) is a promising option, typically implemented as a grid-connected microgrid. To support successful implementations of IECs, it is essential to understand not only the interaction of different technical assets within an IEC but also the corresponding regulation that determines the IEC's economic and ecologic performance. Similar to different technical capabilities of the available assets, companies of an IEC are typically affected by regulation in different, asymmetric ways. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to investigate the economic and ecologic effects stemming from such asymmetric regulation via a microgrid approach. In more detail, we formulate and implement a mixed-integer linear program to investigate the operation of a multi-energy IEC under asymmetric regulation. We conduct a real-world case study to evaluate the effects of German grid-charge regulation as a major example of asymmetric regulation and compare the results of our IEC to a situation where every company of the IEC manages its assets individually. Our results show that IECs have the potential to significantly reduce the total operational energy costs under the current German regulation. While the shared assets see a higher utilization in the IEC, the impact on emissions is, however, limited.