Paper Conference

Proceedings of eSim 2022: 12th Conference of IBPSA-Canada

     

The influence of time horizon on energy hub sizing

François Lédée 1,2, Curran Crawford 1,3, Ralph Evins 1,2
1 Institute for Integrated Energy Systems, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
2 Energy in Cities group, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
3 Sustainable Systems Design Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, British Columbia

Abstract: Sizing energy hubs with interdependent loads, energy sources and devices is a computationally intensive task requiring at least a year of hourly data per load and source. Methods (e.g. using key-days) address this shortage, however none of these attempt to identify the important statistical features in the time series influencing the system sizing. This study investigates the influence of using shorter time horizons on energy hub sizing for single buildings, and tries to identify critical periods or time steps. We find the operational control trajectory of a building energy system is not influenced by the horizon, while the sizing is. Storage technologies play a dominant role in the results, and are extensively used, while the storage sizing results from a complex interplay between charging/discharging speed, storage capacity and use of other technologies in the system.
Keywords: energy hub sizing, optimization, data quantity
Paper:
esim2022_250