Integration of curtailed wind into flexible electrified heating networks with demand-side response and thermal storage: practicalities and need for market mechanisms

Increasingly high renewable penetration in electrified energy systems causes increasing levels of curtailment that must eventually be mitigated. System flexibility, energy storage and demand-side response in the form of flexible heating and cooling demands are efficient solutions for curtailment mitigation, however challenges remain such as the economic benefits of energy storage and the financial impacts of curtailment mitigation on consumers, among others. In this paper the mitigation of curtailed wind energy, incentivised with discount payments, through flexible electrified heating networks with demand-side response and thermal energy storage is investigated with a genetic optimisation algorithm, and results are analysed in terms of overall costs, technical feasibility and level of curtailed wind use from the perspective of the network operator and consumer. It is found that large-scale thermal storage lowers the cost and increases levels of curtailed wind integration, and allows district heating networks to run almost entirely on otherwise curtailed wind energy (up to 97.0 % in the example considered here). However without adequate market mechanisms, demand-side response is financially beneficial to all stakeholders only at low levels; with a split cost approach, financial incentives or market mechanisms are necessary for higher levels of, and more efficient, wind curtailment mitigation.