IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017 - 48

with the respect to the amount of flexibility provided (indicated
in the figure as reduced electricity input from the grid). It can
be seen that a nonprofitable region exists, where demand-
response incentives are not sufficient to make up for the extra
costs in moving from optimal set points to provide flexibility.

Thermal
Demand
Heat
Energy
Gas
Flow
Electricity
Electricity Market
Electricity (Net)
Demand

EHP

∑

Flexibility from Residential Neighborhoods
and Commercial Buildings

TES

∑
CHP

AB
∑

figure 4. An example of a general electricity-and-heat
DMG structure in an integrated electricity-heat-gas
market setup.

decreases the operational costs when the DMG responds to
time-varying market prices and/or regulating signals.
Further, when grid services are requested, the DMG unit in
Figure 4 can adjust the power provided to or withdrawn from
the grid around determined set points, e.g., during the hour- or
day-ahead planning phase, by ramping down/switching off the
EHP and/or ramping up/switching on the CHP plant, among
other possibilities. Of course, different DMG components can be
controlled in real time, based on the underlying time scales of the
regulating commands. The so-called profitability map provides a
way to assess the tradeoff between the operational loss incurred
by deviating the operating points from the optimal ones and the
economic benefits achieved by providing services to the grid.
A qualitative example is provided in Figure 5. The cost to
provide flexibility to the grid generally increases monotonically

Buildings and homes are basic, spatially defined examples
of multi-energy hubs, given the heterogeneous setting that
supplies essential electricity, thermal, and manufacturing
needs. At the commercial level, HVAC units are prospective candidates for providing services to the power grid at
various time scales, especially because of the favorable flexibility offered by thermal inertia in buildings. In particular,
control strategies for fans in air-handing units of commercial
buildings can be designed to provide fast time-scale regulation services to the distribution grid, while simultaneously
minimizing the thermal discomfort of building occupants.
At a slower time scale, and taking advantage of the buildings' thermal inertia, optimization strategies for retail offices
can, for instance, precool during low-power-demand periods
to contribute to power peak-shaving efforts in the summer.
Load-control mechanisms in residential neighborhoods can
enable end users to provide services to the power grid by
offering more favorable tariffs as well as economic incentives
to respond to system-driven signals. As previously mentioned,
load-control mechanisms can be integrated with distributed
and decentralized control strategies for renewable sources of
energy so that the aggregate net power consumption of a number of end customers can follow regulating commands dispatched by electrical distribution systems operators.

Costs and Benefits (µ )

8
Energy Cost Variation
Demand Response (DR)
Benefits

7
6
5

Electricity
Shifting
Potential

0.14
0.12
0.10

4

0.08

3

0.06
0.04

2
Non-Profitable
Region

1
0

0

0.02

DR Incentive (µ /kWhel)

Flexibility from Data Centers

10
20
30
40
50
Reduced Electricity Input from Grid (kWhel)

figure 5. An example of profitability map (in monetary
units μ) of the flexibility provided by a DMG plant. The thick
piecewise linear curve represents the energy cost increase
when moving away from the optimal set points for a given
load at a given time to provide flexibility to the grid; the
dashed lines represents the potential benefits, parameterized
with respect to different demand-response incentives.
48

ieee power & energy magazine

A compelling example of flexible multi-energy systems in a
smart city context is suggested by the growing presence of
differently sized data centers. Data centers can be described
as energy hubs that are characterized by
✔✔ local generation (more and more data centers are
equipped with their own local generation unit)
✔✔ electrical energy storage for reliability purposes,
which can also offer flexibility products
✔✔ thermal cooling processes
✔✔ a flexible load, provided by the possibility of scheduling computational power.
For this reason, recent research has been moving toward the
creation of efficient but also flexible data centers that will
play a critical role in providing energy services in a general
smart multi-energy system context.

Flexibility from Joint Water-Power
Optimization and Control
Operators of municipal water systems (MWSs) and wastewater systems (WWSs) have the core objective of providing
clean water and treated wastewater, according to well-defined
january/february 2017



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017 - Cover1
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017 - Cover2
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017 - 1
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IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017 - Cover3
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2017 - Cover4
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