Abstract
The paper proposes a comparison of different district integration options for a distributed generation system for heating and cooling in an urban area. The system considered includes several production units located close to the users, a central unit and the district heating and cooling network which can connect all the users to each other and to a central unit, where a cogeneration system and a solar plant can be placed. Thus, each user can be regarded as isolated from the others, satisfying its energy needs by means of an autonomous production unit. Alternatively, it can be connected to the others through the district heating and cooling network. When a district heating and cooling network is included in the design option the synthesis-design and operation problems cannot be solved separately, because the energy to be produced by each production site is not known in advance, as the flows through the district heating and cooling network are not defined. This paper uses a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) methodology for the multi-objective optimization of the distributed generation energy system, considering the total annual cost for owning, operating and maintaining the whole system as the economic objective function, while the total annual CO2 emissions as the environmental objective function. The energy system is optimized for different district integration option, in order to understand how they affect the optimal solutions compared with both the environmental and economic objects.
Highlights
The reduction of pollutant emissions is one of the current main targets fixed by international authorities
The model allowsinus obtain the optimal configuration of the system, satisfying the energy requirements of the users, that minimizes the total annual cost and the total CO2 emissions during operation
The aim of the work is to compare on a common basis, different district heating integration options
Summary
The reduction of pollutant emissions is one of the current main targets fixed by international authorities. To deal with optimization of DG energy systems, including DHCN and thermal storage, and focusing on different objectives (economic rather than environmental), it is necessary to consider all aspects at the same time, and not in successive steps. This is because the operation optimization strongly affects the optimal synthesis of the system and, in addition, the economic optimum does not correspond to the environmental one. Some recent papers seem to go in this direction, performing a single objective optimization, generally economic: Chinese proposed a MILP model for the optimization of a DHCN in a DG context [14], Soderman and Petterson [15] presented a structural and operational optimization of a DG energy system. The synthesis, design and operation of the energy system have been simultaneously optimized for different district integration options, in order to understand how they affect the optimal solutions compared with both the environmental and financial objectives
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