A review of neighborhood level multi-carrier energy hubs—uncertainty and problem-solving process

Abstract

The energy hub (EH) is a promising concept that can accurately evaluate the performance of multi-carrier integrated energy systems (IESs), ranging from a building to a district, city, region, country, or even an international level. Multi-carrier EH-based IESs available in the literature have reached a desirable level of maturity for broad scales. However, there is confusion in the literature that misleads readers regarding multi-carrier EH-based IESs located on limited scales (e.g., buildings or neighborhood level). Furthermore, multi-carrier EH-based IESs studies that involve complexities such as discrete, continuous, or mixed decision-making variables, multiple conflicting objective functions, non-linearity, non-convexity, and discontinuity are affected by different techno-economic, environmental, and social parameters that are uncertain. Ignoring such uncertain input parameters (UIPs) in these studies leads to less adaptable results to realistic conditions. However, their integration is a challenging process intensifying these complexities during studies' modeling, optimization, and decision-making processes. Therefore, this review paper aims to fill these gaps by identifying, classifying, assessing, and prioritizing different UIPs, their analyzing techniques, and solution approaches, solvers, and software for addressing relevant optimization problems to achieve a deeper understanding of current challenges and potential future research, trend, and capacities in multi-carrier EH-based IESs studies.