A Mathematical Approach to Improve Energy-Water Nexus Reliability Using a Novel Multi-Stage Adjustable Fuzzy Robust Approach

Abstract: A system of a systems approach that analyzes energy and water systems simultaneously is called energy-water nexus. Neglecting the interrelationship between energy and water drives vulnerabilities whereby limits on one resource can cause constraints on the other resource. Power plant energy production directly depends on water availability, and an outage of the power systems will affect the wastewater treatment facility processes. Therefore, it is essential to integrate energy and water planning models. As mathematical energy-water nexus problems are complex, involve many uncertain parameters, and are large-scale, we proposed a novel multi-stage adjustable Fuzzy robust approach that balances the solutions' robustness against the budget-constraints. Scenario-based analysis indicates that the proposed approach generates flexible and robust decisions that avoid excessive costs compared to conservative methods. Keywords: Energy-water Nexus, Renewable Energy, Optimization under Uncertainty, Fuzzy logic, Robust Optimization