Hourly electricity and heat Demand Response in the OEF of the integrated electricity-heat-natural gas system

Recently, demand-response (DR) programmes are one of the appropriate tools for energy systems to encourage flexible customers to participate in the operation of energy systems. One of the complex tasks in multi-energy environments is optimal energy flow (OEF) problem of these systems. In this regard, this study investigates the OEF of an integrated electrical, heat, and gas system considering flexible heat and electrical demands. The conventional DR programme has been combined with the demand-side energy supplying management activity by introducing switching concept among input energy carriers. The way of the supplying energy of flexible customer can be changed by switching among input energy carriers. Here, the integrated system operator minimises the system operation costs subject to supply flexible consumers' energy. To solve the complex OEF problem, this study presents a new optimisation algorithm named modified biogeography-based optimisation (BBO) algorithm. In this study, the proposed modification for the original BBO increases the robustness and the capability of the proposed optimisation method. The numerical results show that the flexible DR programme creates smoother energy demand curves in heat and electrical networks and reduce the operating costs of the integrated system.