Performance assessment of combined cooling, heating and power system operation strategy based on multi-objective seagull optimization algorithm

Highlights: • A hybrid strategy FST based on FEL and FTL is proposed for the CCHP system. • MOSOA with constrained non-dominant sorting mechanism is to optimize CCHP system. • MOSOA is used to evaluate the performance of FST, FEL and FTL strategies. • FST strategy achieves great economic, energy and environmental performance. This study proposes a novel operation strategy named following the state of thermal storage tank (FST) to enhance the economic, energy and environmental performance of combined cooling, heating and power system. A system incorporating thermal storage tanks, batteries, micro turbines and photovoltaic generation units is built to assess the performance of different strategies. A multi-objective seagull optimization algorithm (MOSOA) is proposed to optimize the economic, energy and environmental objectives simultaneously, by using constrained non-dominant sorting and external archive mechanism into seagull optimization algorithm. In addition, technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution method is used to obtain the optimal compromise solution under the three objective functions to choose MOSOA Pareto solution. A large hotel case is used to evaluate the performance of FST, following the electric load (FEL), and following the thermal load (FTL) strategies in practical application. The result indicates that the output MOSOA Pareto solutions are uniformly distributed and the system performance under FST is superior to FEL and FTL strategies. The system performance is improved with primary energy saving ratio, carbon dioxide emission reduction ratio, energy efficiency and boiler energy saving ratio reaching 31.18%, 41.74%, 55.64% and 1.