Response Allocation of Domestic Hybrid Heat Pumps Flexibility for Congestion Management

Congestion management is crucial for maintaining the required reliability and efficiency of the electrical distribution grid. In this context, the use of electricity-natural gas hybrid heat pumps which can offer great potential flexibility, is worthy of more research. To quantitatively assess the flexibility of hybrid domestic heat pumps in a cluster of residential users and to investigate management strategies to allocate the required response among them, an optimization model has been developed in this paper. The model determines the energy carrier that is used by the hybrid heat pumps such that a collective response to electrical power limitations can be achieved. Results obtained for a cluster of eighteen residential users indicate that various response management strategies, while offering similar levels of flexibility and incurring comparable additional costs at the aggregate level, can lead to significant disparity in fairness. Specifically, the Jain’s fairness index is found to increase by 44.6% when employing a power-driven response management approach compared to a case without response management.