Nadia Panossian, PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering School of MME, Washington State University, Pullman
There are many opportunities for independent power providers to reduce cost of providing energy to their campuses while coordinating with larger utilities. When thermal loads are considered in conjunction with electrical loads more opportunities are available, but dispatching generation and storage systems becomes more complex. There are several methods of reducing dispatch costs while assuring power stability, each with their own advantages and shortfalls, including linear programming, quadratic programming, conic programming, search based methods, machine learning, and transactive control. These methods are developed and evaluated for application to AC power systems with heating and cooling distribution and thermal energy storage.
