Optimal Design of Water Tank Size for Power System Flexibility and Water Quality

The increasing penetration of renewable energy, such as wind power, has brought great challenges to the power system operation due to its uncertainty. Flexibility, which measures the ability of power system to deal with the uncertainties, is critical for power system to adapt to the new era of renewable energy. The rising electrical demand of the water distribution system (WDS) creates opportunities for power system to leverage the flexibility provided by WDS. This paper investigates the water-energy relationship between these two systems and makes full use of the water pumps and tanks in the WDS to enhance the power system flexibility. Current WDS designs did not consider well the role WDS plays in the power system. This hinders the WDS from being fully used by power system to provide flexibility. An optimization model is proposed to determine the optimal tank size of WDS, which may provide the maximum available flexibility of power system. The effect of tank size on water quality is also investigated to ensure that the supplied water quality is not compromised. Moreover, a Benders-based heuristic algorithm is proposed to find the optimization solution more efficiently and to protect the data of each energy system. Results of case study highlight the merit of the proposed optimization design and the advantage of using WDS to provide flexibility for power system.