Introduction
Wind and solar energy will be the dominant renewable means of electricity production of the future. Their intermittency increases the need for complementing flexible technologies such as energy storage (batteries), demand-side management and dispatchable production units. Traditionally biomass- and waste-fired CHPs are considered as ‘must-run’ facilities, i.e. running at constant output power. Our purpose is to identify possibilities to operate such CHPs in a flexible manner, and to calculate their contribution to the network balance.
Partners in the FLEX-CHP project are Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), 2Valorise and Entras. This consortium combines expertise about system modelling, dispatch software and biomass combustion. In different work packages we will study the availability of biomass and waste for electricity and heat production. We will build dynamic models of CHPs with different flexibility options (such as heat storage or dynamic operation) and we will develop advanced dispatch algorithms to operate these facilities in an economically optimum way.
Progress
The project started in November 2022. Results will be shared as they become available.