Long-term reliability evaluation of integrated electricity and gas systems considering distributed hydrogen injections

Power-to-gas facilities consume surplus renewable electricity generation to produce alternative gases, such as green hydrogen. They can be injected into, and transported by the gas network for further use, which is a promising way toward a low-carbon energy system. However, injecting alternative gases into the gas systems can adversely affect the gas composition and the lifespan of components (e.g., gas pipelines), and may threaten the reliability of the entire integrated electricity and gas systems (IEGS) in the long term. To address this issue, this paper proposes a long-term reliability evaluation method for IEGS with distributed hydrogen injections. First, new reliability indices are proposed to evaluate both gas adequacy and gas interchangeability under uncertainties. Then, a multi-state reliability model of the pipeline is developed to characterize the corrosion evolution and hydrogen embrittlement in the long term. A contingency management scheme (CMS) is devised to minimize load curtailments and gas interchangeability deviations under component failures. Moreover, several reformulation techniques are tailored to convexify the original two-stage mixed-integer nonlinear CMS optimization problem. An analytical reliability evaluation method embedded with a system state reduction technique is designed to evaluate the long-term reliability of the IEGS more efficiently. Finally, the IEEE 24 bus Reliability Test System and the practical Belgium gas system are used to validate the proposed method. The numerical results show that the injection of alternative gas could jeopardize the reliability of the studied IEGS by 39.73% in the long term. However, we have observed a critical time window (the 8th–9th year), in which if we conduct the inline inspection and maintenance more frequently, the reliability could be improved by up to 53.31%. These results suggest that the injection of alternative gas is beneficial, but should be carefully regulated to maintain the reliability of IEGS.