A novel preheating coordination approach in electrified heat systems

Coordinated preheating can potentially enhance the flexibility of the electricity system, thereby driving significant economic savings. In this context, this paper proposes a novel game-theory based preheating coordination scheme aimed at guaranteeing the effectiveness of collective preheating performed by a large population of households. By adopting an innovative two-phase iterative algorithm, individual households autonomously schedule their heating power allocation to seek for savings in energy bills while smartly maintaining thermal comfort. Meanwhile, the total electricity generation cost decreases at each iteration and converges to an equilibrium solution asymptotically. Compared to the centralised optimization-based energy management control methods, the proposed algorithm effectively reduces the information exchange while significantly reduces computational complexity. The simulation results indicate that the proposed coordination strategy can drive 12.30% cost saving when all households participate in the preheating scheme whereas 11.35% cost increase will be incurred if coordination is absent. Overall, the proposed preheating control algorithm simultaneously benefits both individual households and the whole system by intelligently linking local behaviour with global interests.