On the Participation of Power-To-Heat Assets in Frequency Regulation Markets—A Danish Case Study

Due to the new green energy policies, district heating companies are being increasingly encouraged to exploit power-to-heat assets, e.g., heat pumps and electric boilers, in their distribution networks besides the traditional central combined heat and power units. The increased utilization of these assets will generate a more complex interaction between power distribution grids and district heating networks including markets for provision of ancillary services. Enabling the participation of power-to-heat units in the ancillary service markets, e.g., frequency reserves, may increase the revenue streams for assets’ owners. However, some technical challenges must first be addressed, including optimization of portfolios of assets that accounts for ancillary service markets, new coordination and operational schemes for portfolio of assets, increase data exchange and interactions with transmission system operators, and new local control schemes for units. This paper proposes a systematic model based design approach for assessment of provision of frequency regulation by power-to-heat assets using the smart grid architecture model. The proposed approach is demonstrated in a Real-Time Control Hardware-in-the-Loop laboratory environment.