Decentralized Optimization of Multi-Area Electricity-Natural Gas Flows Based on Cone Reformulation

A large-scale integrated energy system can represent several subsystems representing areas that are tied by electricity and natural gas networks. Accordingly, we propose a decentralized optimal energy flow (DOEF) calculation as compared with a centralized solution method. The proposed approach demonstrates the merits of the decentralized operation and control of a multi-area integrated electricity-natural gas system (IEGS), in terms of large-scale modeling requirements, faster computations, and data management for local sensitivity analyses. Using the proposed decentralized structure, the communication burden is relatively light as individual area operators in a multi-area IEGS will make optimal dispatch decisions independently and the corresponding information is shared with adjacent subsystems. The reformulation of the second-order cone (SOC) is proposed using advanced sequential cone programming (SCP) to handle the nonlinear steady-state natural gas flow, which provides a feasible solution with a high degree of computational efficiency. Furthermore, an iterative alternating direction method of multipliers (I-ADMM) is adopted to manage the nonconvexity of integer variables, which guarantees a satisfactory convergence performance. Case studies on three multi-area IEGS validate the effectiveness of the proposed model in a multi-area IEGS.