An enterprise control methodology for the techno-economic assessment of the energy water nexus

Abstract

In recent years, the energy-water nexus literature has recognized that the electricity and water infrastructure that enable the production, distribution, and consumption of these two precious commodities is fundamentally intertwined.Electric power is used to produce, treat, distribute, and recycle water while water is used to generate and consume electricity. In the meantime, significant attention has been given to renewable energy integration within the context of global climate change. While these two issues may seem unrelated, their resolution is potentially synergistic in that renewable energy technologies not only present low CO 2 emissions but also low water-intensities. Furthermore, because water is readily stored, it has the potential to act as a flexible energy resource on both the supply as well as the demand-side of the electricity grid. Despite these synergies, the renewable energy integration and energy-water nexus literature have yet to methodologically converge to systematically address potential synergies. This paper advances an enterprise control methodology as a means of assessing the techno-economic performance of the energy water nexus.The enterprise control methodology has been developed in recent years to advance the methodological state of the art of renewable energy integration studies and used recently to carry out a full-scale study for the Independent System Operator (ISO) New England system. The methodology quantifies day-ahead and real-time energy market production costs, dispatched energy mixes, required operating reserves, levels of curtailment, and grid imbalances. This energywater nexus methodological extension now includes flexible water-energy resources within the grid's energy resource portfolio and quantifies the amounts of water withdrawn and consumed. The simulation methodology is demonstrated on a modified version of the RTS-96 (RTS-GMLC) test case.

An Enterprise Control Assessment Case Study of the Energy-Water Nexus for the ISO New England System

“…This study highlights the key role of curtailment and normal operating reserves on the balancing performance of the ISO-NE system. This paper extends the work in [6] and [10] to quantify the flexibility afforded the ISO-NE system through flexible operation of water resources.…”

“…This paper applies the methodology presented in the prequel [10] and [6] to study the techno-economic performance of the energy-water-nexus for the ISO-NE system focusing on six predefined scenarios in 2040. The study methodology takes the yellow rectangle of Fig.…”

“…At the same time, significant attention has gone into the integration of variable renewable energy into the electricity grid as a means of decarbonizing the electricity supply system. As discussed in the prequel to this paper [10], the challenges of renewable energy integration and energy-water-nexus are very much related. In addition to presenting low CO 2 emissions, VREs have very low lifecycle water intensities [11].…”

Investigating the Role of Renewable Energies in Integrated Energy-water Nexus Planning under Uncertainty Using Fuzzy Logic

“…The growing demand of common resources is predicted to be one of the main topics of conflicts in the upcoming years not only on interconnected resources but, in many other critical area (see [4,5]). Renewable energies such as wind and solar are considered to have unlimited capacity [6]. They also do not rely on water for power generations.…”

“…However, due to these power sources' uncertain nature, building a model that generates reliable decisions under uncertainty to maximize their energy-water nexus systems efficiency is essential [7]. To the best of our knowledge, there are a few studies that offer general mathematical energy-water nexus planning models [8,9,10,6,11]. Ghassemi [12] proposed a framework for energy-water nexus planning that minimizes the total systems cost while reducing the unwanted environmental effects.…”