In some countries and regions, water distribution and treatment consume a considerable amount of electric energy. This paper investigates the water network's potential ability to provide demand response services to the power grid for the management of renewable resources under the framework of a distribution-level water–energy nexus (micro WEN). In particular, the hidden controllable water loads, such as irrigation systems, were closely studied as virtual energy storage to improve the flexibility of electrical grids. An optimization model is developed for the demand-side management (DSM) of micro WEN, and the simulation results assert that grid flexibility indeed benefits from taking controllable water loads into account. Although the proposed optimal DSM model is a computationally intractable mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, quasi-convex hull techniques were developed to relax the MINLP into a mixed-integer convex programming (MICP) problem. The numerical study shows that the quasi-convex hull relaxation is tight and that the resulting MICP problem is computationally efficient.

中文翻译：

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微型水能连结：最佳需求侧管理和准凸型船体松弛

在一些国家和地区，水的分配和处理消耗大量电能。本文研究了水网络在配电级水能关系（微型WEN）框架下为电网提供需求响应服务以管理可再生资源的潜在能力。尤其是，对诸如灌溉系统之类的隐藏可控水负载进行了深入研究，将其作为虚拟能量存储以提高电网的灵活性。针对微型WEN的需求侧管理（DSM），开发了一个优化模型，仿真结果表明，电网灵活性的确得益于可控制的水负荷。尽管所提出的最佳DSM模型是一个计算上难以解决的混合整数非线性规划（MINLP）问题，但仍开发了拟凸船体技术以将MINLP松弛为一个混合整数凸规划（MICP）问题。数值研究表明，准凸壳松弛是紧密的，所产生的MICP问题在计算上是有效的。