Optimization Tool for the Strategic Outline and Sizing of District Heating Networks Using a Geographic Information System

Abstract

The implementation of district heating networks into cities is a main topic in policy planning that looks for sustainable solutions to reduce CO2 emissions. However, their development into cities is generally limited by a high initial investment cost. The development of optimization methods intended to draft efficient systems using heating consumption profiles into a prescribed geographic area are useful in this purpose. Such tools are already referred to in the scientific literature, yet they are often restricted to limit the computational load. To bridge this gap, the present contribution proposes a multi-period mixed integer linear programming model for the optimal outline and sizing of a district heating network maximizing the net cash flow based on a geographic information system. This methodology targets a large range of problem sizes from small-scale to large-scale heating networks while guaranteeing numerical robustness. For sake of simplicity, the developed model is first applied to a scaled down case study with 3 available heating sources and a neighborhood of 16 streets. The full-scale model is presented afterwards to demonstrate the applicability of the tool for city-scale heating networks with around 2000 streets to potentially connect within a reasonable computational time of around only one hour.