Effectiveness of optimization procedures on the economic profitability of a virtual tri-generation power plant connected to a district heating cooling network

This study investigates the impact of an optimized schedule procedure in enhancing the Economic Profitability (EP) of a tri-generation energy facility located in the Northern Italy and connected to a local District Heating and Cooling (DHC) network.The FICOTM Xpress Software has been utilized to optimize the thermal and electrical scheduling of the Combined Heating Cooling Power Plant (CHCPP)-DHC system by making use of both the effective exercise parameters of the CHCPP machines and a series of heating/cooling data loads delivered to the grid and appropriately selected from those considered representative of each season. The complex evolution of the traditional energy market has suggested to improve the optimization procedure by including the constrains resulting from the subscription of a Virtual Power Plant Management (VPPM) agreement. As main purpose, this work analyses and compares the impact that the implementation of both the adopted optimization procedure and the subscription of the VPPM contract can have in enhancing the EP index of the investigated energy facility. The outcomes of this analysis evidence that the acceptance of the VPPM can entail a positive impact of the entire EP index of the facility. This happens at the condition that the machines are rescheduled at the exercise conditions resulting from the simultaneous implementation of an optimization procedure. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of the optimization procedures in enhancing the global energy efficiency of complex energy systems. Furthermore, it demonstrates the role that innovative management solutions, as those represented by the emerging VPPM opportunities, could have in making the existing energy plants active players in the future Distributed Energy Generation (DEG) scenarios.