Fifth-Generation District Heating and Cooling Substations: Demand Response with Artificial Neural Network-Based Model Predictive Control

Simone Buffa,Anton Soppelsa,Mauro Pipiciello,Roberto Fedrizzi,Gregor Henze

doi:10.3390/en13174339

Abstract

District heating and cooling (DHC) is considered one of the most sustainable technologies to meet the heating and cooling demands of buildings in urban areas. The fifth-generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) concept, often referred to as ambient loops, is a novel solution emerging in Europe and has become a widely discussed topic in current energy system research. 5GDHC systems operate at a temperature close to the ground and include electrically driven heat pumps and associated thermal energy storage in a building-sited energy transfer station (ETS) to satisfy user comfort. This work presents new strategies for improving the operation of these energy transfer stations by means of a model predictive control (MPC) method based on recurrent artificial neural networks. The results show that, under simple time-of-use utility rates, the advanced controller outperforms a rule-based controller for smart charging of the domestic hot water (DHW) thermal energy storage under specific boundary conditions. By exploiting the available thermal energy storage capacity, the MPC controller is capable of shifting up to 14% of the electricity consumption of the ETS from on-peak to off-peak hours. Therefore, the advanced control implemented in 5GDHC networks promotes coupling between the thermal and the electric sector, producing flexibility on the electric grid.

Highlights

Fifth-generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) is an innovative concept to cover simultaneously both the heating and cooling demands in urban areas
The results show that, for given values of the hysteresis band and thermal energy storage volume, The second part of the results section aims at comparing the model predictive control (MPC) to rule-based control (RBC) performance under the higher the position of the sensor, the larger is the %discom f ort, because it results in a smaller hot the boundary conditions of the time-of-use demand response scenario presented in Section 2.6, where volume of the thermal energy storage to absorb a peak in the domestic hot water (DHW) demand
When a large DHW draw-off occurs in the apartments, the temperature in the return pipe of the DHW can be very low (~20 ◦ C), causing an instantaneous turn-on of the water-source heat pump (WSHP) in the DHW mode, even if the thermal energy storage is fully charged

Summary

Introduction

Fifth-generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) is an innovative concept to cover simultaneously both the heating and cooling demands in urban areas. Decarbonising the Building Sector with 5GDHC Systems. The heating and cooling sector is responsible for about 50% of the total final energy consumption in Europe [1], contributing substantially to poor air quality in urban areas because of fossil fuel combustion; the highest incidence rate of premature deaths due to air pollution occurs in Italy and in Eastern. Without any measures being implemented, the current district heating and cooling (DHC) business will be affected by the variation of buildings’ thermal energy demands in the coming decades due to various energy efficiency programs [7]

Objectives

Results

Conclusion