Real-Time Simulation System for Small Scale Regional Integrated Energy Systems

Abstract

Regional Integrated Energy Systems (RIESs) integrate wide spectrum of energy sources and storage with optimized energy management and further pollution reduction. This paper presents a real-time simulation system for RIESs powered by multiple digital signal processors (DSPs) with different means of data exchange. The RIES encompasses the DC microgrid (DMG), the district heat network (DHN), and the natural gas network (NGN). To realize multi-energy flow simulation, averaged switch models are investigated for different types of device-level units in the DMG, and the unified energy path method is used to build circuit-dual models of the DHN and NGN. A hierarchical island strategy (HIS) and a multi-energy dispatch strategy (MEDS) are proposed to enhance the energy flow control and operating efficiency. The two-layer HIS can adjust the operating status of device-level units in real time to achieve bus voltage stability in the DMG; MEDS uses energy conversion devices to decouple multi-energy flows and adopts the decomposed flow method to calculate the flow results for each network. The real-time simulation hardware platform is built, and both electricity-led and thermal-led experiments are carried out to verify the accuracy of models and the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The proposed system with an energy management strategy aims to provide substantial theoretical and practical contributions to the control and simulation of RIESs, thus supporting the advancement of integrated energy systems.