Optimal operation of energy hubs integrated with renewable energy sources and storage devices considering CO2 emissions

Electricity production, heat, and cooling requirements are one of the main problems for energy distribution network businesses. Different energy grids like gas and electricity run concurrently as a particular solution for overcoming the issue. "Energy Hub" (EH) is a vague approach for an energy center composed of electricity, gas, heat and at times cooling networks. Energy hub systems can be considered as a powerful alternative to improve the use of existing energy resources. This paper proposes a novel technique for optimum operation and configuration of multiple energy hubs. The proposed EH contains different types of energy sources and generation with multi-type energy storage devices to feed electrical, heating and gas demands. The EH contains renewable energy resources (wind and PV), combined heat and power cogeneration, power-to-gas units and gas-fired generator to provide interdependencies of infrastructures for these energy sources. Uncertainties of both wind and PV energy resources are considered in this study. A multi-objective optimization problem is formulated to maximize social welfare and minimize CO2 emissions. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to solve the overall optimization problem. The impact of the hub configuration on the EHs stability and security are examined. The proposed model is tested on IEEE 69 bus through several case studies to examine its effectiveness and applicability. A comparative analysis is conducted between different configurations of the EH. The comparison proved that the best performance in terms of configuration, operational, emissions, and stability is obtained with a combination of PV generator, wind turbine, electrical storage, thermal storage, natural gas storage, and power to gas unit.