Operational Planning of District Heating and Cooling Systems with Thermal Storage Tanks

Abstract

An operational planning problem of district heating and cooling systems which are composed of gas turbine cogeneration and heat pump/thermal storage facilities is discussed. A sensitivity-analysis-based method is proposed to obtain the charging/discharging strategy of a thermal storage tank by simple means. The effectiveness of the method is investigated from the viewpoints of computation time and accuracy of the solution, by comparing it with other methods : dynamic-programming-based, decomposition-based, and scheduling-based ones. A numerical study shows that the sensitivity-analysis-based method is effective from the viewpoint of computation time while it keeps the accuracy of solution as compared with the dynamic-programming-based or decomposition-based method. This feature is advantageous for use of the method proposed in the from of an algorithm in real-time operation and system design.