A New General Multi-layout Energy Hub Management Model for Industrial and Commercial Multi-energy Systems with Complex Configurations

Today, the energy management and operation of industrial/commercial multi-energy systems have become more complex due to the new technological advances in energy conversion and energy flow through different elements. Although the currently employed energy hub concept can accurately monitor/model multi-energy systems, it is not applicable when more complex modeling characterizations are required, i.e., operation under different voltage levels in an industrial site, one system supplying another system sequentially, several interconnected energy conversion systems being employed, etc. Moreover, these systems need to be modeled as a whole for energy management and operation optimization purposes which is not possible if they are individually modeled by the conventional energy hub concept. Therefore, to achieve an optimum energy management solution for these complex systems, further studies are required to enhance the performance of the existing energy hub models. This paper presents a new general multi-layout energy hub concept for large-scale industrial/commercial multi-energy systems with complex configurations. The proposed model is able to divide the system in different layouts, providing an exact relationship between all elements of each layout (inspired by the conventional energy hub concept), and present them in a general mathematical model which is directly solvable. The proposed multi-layout energy hub concept is able to model complex multi-energy systems as a united system. Therefore, the optimality of the energy management solution is guaranteed as it is obtained based on all elements of the system as a whole. A comprehensive case study is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model.