Participation of hydrogen-rich energy hubs in day-ahead and regulation markets: A hybrid stochastic-robust model

Hydrogen-based technologies are one of the pathways toward a carbon-neutral world. This paper proposes a hybrid stochastic-robust framework for the optimal operation of hydrogen-based energy hubs (EHs) for a short-term horizon. The EH operator, as a large consumer, should make decisions to procure the required energy to meet the demands dealing with uncertainties in real-time. To manage the EH efficiently, the EH operator participates in the regulation market (RM) deploying regulation up (RU) and regulation down (RD) actions to compensate for the errors stem from the forecasting procedure in intra-hours. In addition, the EH should support the required hydrogen for hydrogen vehicles (HVs) on a hydrogen refueling station. Power-to-gas unit alongside a gas storage system links the electricity and natural gas network, and it facilitates the heat demand errors in intra-hours using gas-fed boilers. The uncertainty of the demands and the initial state of charge of the HVs are addressed by stochastic programming, while the uncertainty of the RM prices is considered by robust optimization to reach the worst-case realization of the RM prices. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in managing the hydrogen-rich EH and energy storage systems with the day-ahead and real-time horizons. The amount of 14% error in electricity demands in the intra hours is resulted in 10% increases in purchasing from the RM at the same time.