dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaStochastic Power-Water Coordination: Unlocking Flexibility in Hybrid RO Desalination Plants via Variable-Speed Pumps and Tank Mixing
| Authors | Rongxing Hu, Charalambos Konstantinou |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | 2601.07295vv1 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07295 |
| License | http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
Abstract
Water desalination plants (DPs) are among the most critical infrastructures and largest electricity loads in water-scarce regions worldwide. Although reverse osmosis (RO) desalination is the most energy-efficient and dominant technology, it remains energy-intensive but can offer substantial flexibility potential for power systems. This paper proposes a coordinated operation framework for power systems and DPs that explicitly accounts for both systems' operational constraints and fully unlocks DP flexibility. To achieve this, a detailed DP model is developed, incorporating the characteristics of an actual high-pressure pump with variable-speed operation, on-off operation with flushing requirements, water quality constraints, and water dynamics and salt mixing in the storage tank. By proactively managing freshwater storage and tank salinity in a closed-loop coordinated scheduling framework, the operational flexibility of the DP is significantly enhanced. With appropriate simplification and linearization, the resulting coordinated scheduling problem is formulated as a tractable mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model, and a two-step decomposed commitment-scheduling stochastic optimization (TDCSO) is proposed to efficiently address uncertainties. Case studies validate the proposed approach and demonstrate up to a 6% operating cost reduction.
{
"annotation_id": "dfbf2b52-41fa-4c8b-b97c-8f18af6ddc1a",
"date_created": "2026-02-17T05:53:12.534000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-02-17T05:53:12.534000Z",
"file_hash": "e63d3051c6953e3e97324ac7b2454c43a0016b3cd2e2533bc776852c5094d557",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "Water desalination plants (DPs) are among the most critical infrastructures and largest electricity loads in water-scarce regions worldwide. Although reverse osmosis (RO) desalination is the most energy-efficient and dominant technology, it remains energy-intensive but can offer substantial flexibility potential for power systems. This paper proposes a coordinated operation framework for power systems and DPs that explicitly accounts for both systems\u0027 operational constraints and fully unlocks DP flexibility. To achieve this, a detailed DP model is developed, incorporating the characteristics of an actual high-pressure pump with variable-speed operation, on-off operation with flushing requirements, water quality constraints, and water dynamics and salt mixing in the storage tank. By proactively managing freshwater storage and tank salinity in a closed-loop coordinated scheduling framework, the operational flexibility of the DP is significantly enhanced. With appropriate simplification and linearization, the resulting coordinated scheduling problem is formulated as a tractable mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model, and a two-step decomposed commitment-scheduling stochastic optimization (TDCSO) is proposed to efficiently address uncertainties. Case studies validate the proposed approach and demonstrate up to a 6% operating cost reduction.",
"arxiv_id": "2601.07295",
"authors": [
"Rongxing Hu",
"Charalambos Konstantinou"
],
"categories": [
"eess.SY",
"cs.SY"
],
"license": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
"title": "Stochastic Power-Water Coordination: Unlocking Flexibility in Hybrid RO Desalination Plants via Variable-Speed Pumps and Tank Mixing",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07295",
"version": "v1"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "b1a1fcff-eed7-4cd2-bcc0-ebb929fd224d",
"id": "arXiv Dataset",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-01-17",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}