Bi-level Planning Model for Urban Energy Steady State Optimal Configuration

BackgroundWith the rapid development of social economy, energy consumption has continued to grow, and the contradiction between energy supply and demand has become increasingly tense. Cities account for two-thirds of global primary energy demand that makes urban energy systems become a center of sustainable transitions.MethodsThis paper builds a bi-level planning model for steady state optimal configuration to realize the reasonable planning of the urban energy structure. The first level mainly analyzes the relationship between coal, petroleum, natural gas, and renewable energy when the energy system is in a stable state. Based on the steady-state relationship of multiple energy sources, the second level is mainly aiming at energy allocation of the city, to achieve the minimization of construction and operating costs of the urban energy system, as well as the pollutant emissions. And nonlinear system dynamics and the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) algorithm are implemented to solve the model.ResultsThe model studies the interaction between four energy sources to find out the demand of each energy source when the urban energy system is in a stable state. To illustrate the advantage of the method, the application of the planning model proposed in this paper is discussed in the energy system of city J of China. Under the premise of ensuring the stability of the urban energy system, the city J has two energy planning schemes: mainly coal or mainly high-quality energy.ConclusionThe coal-based energy structure can save economic costs. However, from the perspective of actual demand or ecological environment, the urbanization level of city J is relatively high, and the coal-based energy structure is unreasonable and may cause greater environmental pollution. Under the type of high-quality energy development model, city J should continue to strengthen the adjustment of the industrial structure and optimize and upgrade the urban development path. The focus is on strengthening the use of clean energy and improving energy efficiency, thereby further reducing the demand for traditional fossil energy in the process of economic development.