Co-optimization of the power and heat market

Details

Supervisors

Papavasiliou, Anthony ; de Maere d'Aertycke, Gauthier

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil en mathématiques appliquées

Abstract

Our current era is characterized by a power and heat market relying mostly on fossil fuel energy. These resources might be cheap and easy to use, but the scarcity and cli- mate impact on fossil fuels require a change in power and heat systems. The burning of fossil fuels by humans is the largest source of emissions of carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide contribute to global warning and harm the atmosphere in a way that cannot be overlooked anymore. Our society has been focusing for too long on the economic perks, disregarding the environmental consequences. A significant drop in greenhouse gas emissions is needed in order to entrust to the future generations a healthy earth. One of the purposes of this work is to evaluate the consequences of a mandatory drop of the greenhouse gas emissions on the power and heat market. The global warming being an issue high on the agenda this last decade, a lot of research has been conducted in order to come up with alternative energy sources to fossil fuel. Innovative technologies such as photovoltaic systems, onshore and offshore wind turbines or hydroelectric run-of-the-river systems are a result of this research. The current literature however primarily concentrates on the electricity sector, leaving the heat sector on a secondary position. Yet, the heat sector is responsible for a major part of the carbon dioxide emission and should in consequence not be overlooked. The few studies that do focus on the heat sector usually consider it independently from the power sector. The same can be said for the power market; it is commonly analyzed omitting the heat market. The particularity of this thesis is that it combines the power and heat market and views them as one entity. For a long time, the heat market was seen as a decentralized market. This means that each building or industry for example has its own individual technology to gener- ate its heat. The main drawback of a decentralized market is that it prioritizes small technologies with a low investment cost, leaving no room for bigger, more expensive technologies that might be more efficient. By centralizing the heat market and merging it with the power market, the set of cost-effective technologies expands. Fuel efficient technologies such as combined heat and power (CHP) plants will be more likely to ap- pear in the market as they can generate both electricity and useful heat at the same time. Cogeneration of heat and power is a more thermally efficient use of fuel than 1 electricity generation alone, and releases as a consequence less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The consolidation of the power and heat sector will allow us to conduct a more thorough study of changes occurring when decreasing the level of emitted greenhouse gasses. First, it enables us to inspect the distribution of the energy resources between the electricity and the heat sector. The energy resources are available to all sectors, and the technologies of different sectors are competing for the same resources, which are not always available in infinite quantity. Knowledge on the distribution of renewable energy sources is especially interesting if we are trying to switch to a fully decarbonized market. Second, as stated previously, it broadens the set of available technologies by including cogeneration or combined heat and power. Finally, it allows us to identify which sector is most affected by a mandatory greenhouse gas reduction