A flexibility-oriented model for a sustainable local multi-carrier energy community: A hybrid multi-objective probabilistic-IGDT optimization approach

The Local Multi-Carrier Energy Systems (LMCESs) offer a great opportunity for Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) development in the energy system. The high variability of DERs output and the energy demands of the LMCESs increase the flexibility requirements in the upstream power system. In this context, an incentive-based mechanism needs to be considered by the power system operator to motivate the LMCESs to reduce the power exchange ramp rate with the upstream power system through an efficient energy management system in the LMCESs. This paper proposes a novel LMCESs optimization model that considers the flexibility constraint impacts on the economic and environmental objective functions. Additionally, the cost objective function accounts for the incentive to encourage cooperation from the LMCES in the flexibility program. To simultaneously address economic and emission-related objectives, the epsilon constraint method as a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approach is employed. Moreover, a hybrid Probabilistic-IGDT method is employed to model the uncertainty of energy resources and demands. The optimization results underscore that increasing flexibility defaults while keeping flexibility prices constant reduces the operational cost of LMCES, but the impact on cost when increasing flexibility prices depends on whether the flexibility default is low or high. In particular, the flexibility price results in a cost reduction of 3.07 % in scenarios with low flexibility defaults and a significant reduction of 29.64 % in scenarios with high flexibility defaults.