District Heating Network Design and Configuration Optimization with Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, the configuration of a district heating (DH) network which connects from the heating plant to the end users was optimized with emphasizing the network thermal performance. Each end user in the network represents a building block. The locations of the building blocks are fixed while the heating plant location is allowed to vary. The connection between the heat generation plant and the end users can be represented with mixed integer and the pipe friction and heat loss formulations are non-linear. In order to find the optimal DH distribution pipeline configuration, the genetic algorithm which handles the mixed integer nonlinear programming problem was chosen. The network configuration was represented through binary and integer encoding and was optimized in terms of the net present cost (NPC). The optimization results indicated that the optimal DH network configuration is determined by multi factors as the consumer heating load, the distance between the heating plant to the consumer, the design criteria regarding pressure and temperature limitation, as well as the corresponding network heat loss.