Economic Impact of the Design Strategies for Decarbonization and Resilience of a Multi-Energy System

Abstract The increase in the penetration of renewable energy sources, the impacts of climate change, and geopolitical crises pose serious challenges to the reliability of modern energy systems. In fact, uncertainty regarding resource availability and prices, along with the growing frequency of disruptive events affecting supply infrastructure, threatens their safe operation. In this context, optimization tools offer valuable support to engineers in designing and planning energy systems to achieve decarbonization targets and enhance resilience, while minimizing costs for users. This paper presents the application of an optimization tool for the design of a distributed multi-energy system aimed at minimizing the total cost of meeting the electricity and heating demands of a group of users. The effect of decarbonization targets on system design is analyzed, and exogenous disruptive events are simulated by imposing extreme values on energy prices and restricting the availability of energy carriers. This approach enables the identification of resilient system designs capable of ensuring energy supply under extreme conditions. The objective of the study is to assess the economic impact of design measures needed to achieve decarbonization targets and ensure system resilience. Results show that full system decarbonization entails costs approximately three times higher than those of the cost-optimal solution. Moreover, the most resilient system configuration, capable of meeting users’ demand independently of public electricity and gas grids, requires a cost increase of more than four times compared to that of the cost-optimal design. This is primarily due to the large storage capacity needed to dispatch non-programmable renewable energy.