Integrating process-level production scheduling into bidding strategy of steelmaking in multiple electricity markets

Electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking has enormous load flexibility by adjusting production scheduling and can monetize it by trading in multiple electricity markets. However, market trading and production scheduling have not been well coordinated in the existing studies, leading to huge profit losses risks. To address this issue, this paper integrates the process-level production scheduling into the bidding model to form a new coordinated optimization framework for EAF steelmaking participating in energy and reserve ancillary service markets. First, an extended resource task network (RTN) model is proposed to optimize the production scheduling, which can not only model load shifting, but also load reduction, so as to fully tap into the demand response potential. Second, a tailored price scenario generation method is proposed to provide a decision-making basis for simultaneously bidding in different markets, which can capture the inherent correlations between prices in different markets. Finally, a coordinated optimization model is established to integrate production scheduling into bidding strategies. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified with numerical case studies.