3.1. Flexible Thermal Load Model
The purpose of building heat demand is to maintain indoor temperature at a comfortable temperature perceived by the human body under the interference of outdoor environmental factors, which is determined by the dynamic heat transfer process. However, this process is influenced by a lot of factors, e.g., wind speed, irradiation intensity, ambient temperature, and the characteristics of the building envelope, making it challenging to develop a precise model. In addition, the multitude of buildings and diverse rooms within the HRIES, individually modeling each building is impractical and unnecessary. A lumped model is employed to simplify the heat transfer process, in which a multi-story building or some adjacent building clusters with similar features can be abstracted as a typical large room. The dynamic heat balance features of this room are employed to describe the buildings approximately. Accordingly, the heat dynamic process is shown in
Figure 2.
According to
Figure 2, the heat dynamic balance is realized under the combined action of internal disturbance heat generation, equipment heating, envelope heat transfer, and fresh air infiltration heat transfer. The balance can be expressed as the following equation.
where
Cbu represents the total capacity of buildings (MJ/°C); HP is heating power (MW);
T represents temperature (°C);
t is the time interval (
h); the subscript
in represents indoor;
,
and
represent the heat generation power of internal disturbance, the heat transfer power caused by indoor and outdoor temperature difference and the heat loss power of new air infiltration, respectively.
represents the sum of heat power of heating equipment, which can be expressed as,
where subscripts CHP, GB, and TES represent CHP units, gas boilers, and heat storage devices; the superscripts
im and
ex represent energy input and energy output, respectively.
According to
Figure 2, the heat load (
HLt) is the difference between heat power contributed by internal disturbance (e.g., thermal energy from household appliances, thermal dissipation by server operation) and the sum of that contributed by thermal transfer and cold air infiltration. When the sum of the heat power of heating equipment (
) is equal to the heat load, the derivative
is 0, and the indoor temperature of buildings remains constant (namely the steady period). When
is greater than the heat load, the derivative exceeds 0, and the indoor temperature of buildings will increase (namely the ascent period), which realizes the storage of heat energy in buildings. When
, the derivative is less than 0, the indoor temperature of buildings will decrease (namely the descent period), which releases the heat energy stored in buildings.
The thermal power brought by the internal disturbance usually is less than that of the heating devices. Usually, it is defined by an empirical formula in [
29].
where
uag is the average thermal power of the unit heating area contributed by the internal distribution, whose empirical value is 3.8 W/m
2.
A is the thermal supply area of buildings.
The process of heat transfer loss of the building envelope is extremely complex. It is thus assumed that the temperature of indoor air equals that of the inner surface of the envelope, and outdoor air equals that of the outer to simplify this process. The heat loss of the building envelope equals the sum of that of the doors, windows, walls, floors, roofs, etc. Accordingly, the thermal power contributed by heat transfer loss can be defined by the main heat transfer loss and the correction factor of the corresponding influence element (e.g., orientation, wind velocity, radiation intensity).
where
,
,
and
are the correction factor of additional height, environment temperature, solar radiation, and wind velocity, respectively;
and
are the thermal transfer coefficient and the area of
i-th envelope, respectively;
is the temperature of the outdoor environment;
ne is the number of the envelope.
In addition, the pressure difference brought by the temperature difference in indoor and outdoor environments drives cold air infiltration through the doors and windows, resulting in heat energy loss. For civil buildings, the thermal power contributed by cold air infiltration is defined in [
30],
where
and
refer to the isobaric specific heat capacity (1.0 kJ/(kg⋅K)) and the density (1.29 kJ/m
3) of air, respectively;
V represents the volume of building space;
is the ventilation frequency of buildings.
The energy loss of heat transfer and cold air infiltration is driven by the indoor and outdoor temperature difference. Their sum is thus simplified by introducing a comprehensive thermal transfer coefficient
.
The comprehensive thermal transfer coefficient is defined as,
As a result, a comprehensive time coefficient that evaluates the level of thermal storage time of building space can be developed as,
Accordingly, the dynamic heat balance equation can be rewritten as,
The above equation is discretized and then its discretized form is obtained.
According to Equation (10), the indoor temperature at the next time relies on the current time and the sum of the heat power of heating devices.
When a constant temperature control strategy is employed, the derivative
equals zero. Accordingly, Equation (9) can be rewritten as the following equation.
According to Equation (11), the sum of the heat power of heating equipment equals the heat demand. The heat load thus losses the flexible adjustment potential.
The temperature variation of the indoor air lags behind that of the thermal transfer medium. Some thermal energy can be stored in the internal space of the building, showing thermal inertia. In addition, the perception of the human body for the thermal environment of the building is fuzzy, which provides a flexible regulation potential. The thermal environment is affected by many factors (e.g., indoor temperature, humidity, air velocity, metabolism, clothing thermal resistance); its calculation model thus is extremely complex. To simplify the model, the influence of minor factors (e.g., air velocity and humidity) is usually ignored in engineering. Accordingly, the predicted mean vote (PMV) is introduced to measure the thermal comfort of the building [
31].
where
represents the average temperature of the skin surface in a comfortable state, with an approximate value of 32.6 °C;
represents the thermal resistance of the garment, which is approximately 0.11 (m
2·°C)/W in winter;
ME represents the human metabolic rate, with an approximate value of 80 W/m
2 in [
32].
According to “Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning Design Specifications”, the value of PMV is between ±1. Maximum indoor temperature and minimum indoor temperature in winter can be calculated at 26.0 °C and 16.9 °C respectively.
When the operation optimization fails to consider the regulation of flexible heat load (namely constant temperature control strategy), the heat load of the building is only a time series curve. Inversely, if the variable temperature control strategy is introduced into the scheduling, there are countless time series curves of thermal load. The scheduling aims to find an optimal indoor temperature curve in its elastic range to promote the operational performance of HRIES (e.g., the consumption increase of wind energy and carbon emission reduction). Accordingly, the regulation model of the flexible heat load is defined as,
where
represents the time step, and its value in this paper is 1h.
3.2. Flexible Electrical Load Model
Electrical loads can be divided into shiftable, transferable, reducible, and rigid loads. The shiftable load needs to overall shift its working time cycle, such as a load of washing machine, dryer, and electric oven. The transferable load must maintain its energy balance in a scheduling cycle, without the continuity limitation of working time, such as a load of electric vehicles and water heaters. Reducible load refers to the demand that can withstand a certain interruption or reduction during the scheduling cycle. The rigid load is unchanged and is fully responded to by HRIES.
According to this, this paper establishes a regulation model of flexible electrical load based on the transferability, reducibility, and rigidity of electrical load.
where
represents the actual electrical load;
represents the rigid electrical load;
,
and
represent the turn-in ratio, turn-out ratio, and load shedding ratio at time t, respectively.
The transferable load needs to meet the energy balance in the scheduling period.
In addition, the transfer-in ratio, transfer-out ratio, and load-shedding ratio of the flexible load model should be less than their respective maximum values.