An Optimization Method of District Heating and Cooling Plant Operation Based on Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

District heating and cooling (DHC) plants are appointed a mission to provide always enough heated or cooled water economically for time variable demand. Especially for the DHC Plant using electricity, it is important to use electricity in night time, and to cut using electricity in peak time in day time. To perform it, solving of the scheduling problem for plant operation is required.
This kind of DHC plant operation scheduling problem is represented as an integer programming (IP) one. For solving the IP problem including discrete variables takes much time for on-line use in many cases. In this paper, a method of solving IP problem for scheduling DHC plant operation in practical time for on-line use, using Genetic Algorithm (GA) is proposed. Also, the effectiveness is discussed by simulation examination.