(372l) The Influence of Renewable Penetration on Optimal Planning and Scheduling of Industrial Utility Plants: Economics, Environmental Impact, Flexibility and Resiliency

Planning and scheduling of industrial utility plants (e.g. electricity/heating/cooling autoproducer) is a classical optimization problem that has been intensively investigated so far. However, the recent trends on renewable penetration and smart grid provide some new perspectives to look at this problem. The influence of renewable energy adoption and smart grid connection to both existing and new industrial utility plant remains uncertain. In this paper, the influence of such renewable energy and smart grid innovations are evaluated from the perspectives of economics, environmental impact, flexibility, and resiliency. Particularly, utility plants for several typical chemical processes are modeled and compared under conventional design with off-grid fossil fuel and novel renewable based smart grid design. Different metrics regarding economics, environmental impact, flexibility and resiliency of the system are calculated and compared. Some insights would be expected from such a comparative study and better guide the planning and scheduling of utility plants in the new context of renewable penetration and smart grid.