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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
District heating and cooling systems incorporating heat recovery and large-scale thermal storage, such as the Stanford Energy Systems Innovations project, dramatically reduce energy waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Here we explore the potential for other co-benefits of these systems: providing demand response, load following services to the electrical grid and carbon emissions reductions in the short run, and structural flexibility in the long run. We consider both the operation and design of district energy systems that couple multiple energy vectors across timescales of both hours to years and years to decades. We study real, physically integrated energy systems that are robust to both multiple operating conditions and potential futures through advanced analytical methods for decision making under uncertainty at different time scales. Accordingly, this research aims to bridge two distinct research communities: energy systems modeling and operations research.
Host: Michael Chertkov