Optimal dynamic thermal plant control: A study and benchmark

Abstract:
District heating networks (DHNs) play a vital role in thermal energy supply in many countries. Thus, it comes to no surprise that these has been a central role in improving energy efficiency for private and public energy suppliers alike around the globe. Many studies have previously investigated the potential of energy saving by low temperature operation of the DHN and the integration of renewable energies. Many other studies consider this problem in terms of mixed integer linear programming. Here, we instead investigate the utilization of well-established continuous optimization methods to improve DHN operation efficiency by minimizing thermal losses. We demonstrate that optimal control is able to significantly lower the DHN temperature for general energy savings of around 8%, but can even further improve its operation when considering dynamic energy pricing, reducing the cost of operation by roughly 12%. We demonstrate the applicability of this method in a realistic, openly available network in Switzerland (OpenDHN), with a total runtime of less than 5 minutes on a standard desktop computer per experiment. Furthermore, the data and code to reproduce this study will be made publicly available upon acceptance.