Optimal management of a complex DHC plant

Highlights: • Cooling generation and heat sinks are studied under strict climatic conditions. • An Energy Management System is proposed to deliver optimal generating strategies. • To fulfil energy requirements and heat sink constraint electric chillers are used. • Absorption chillers are not used even when thermal energy is considered free. - Abstract: Hybrid polygeneration power plants, generating more than one energy vector, are a promising way to increase generation efficiency. These power plants can be used to generate cooling power in warm regions and, in such cases, condensing requirements of the cooling generators become a major issue to be solved. In addition to the inherent complexity of operating an hybrid polygeneration plant, the condensing constraint complicates the operation creating the necessity of finding an optimal operation including climatic variables. In this work five scenarios for a trigeneration plant are presented combining condensing constraints and storage by using an optimization management tool based on Mixed Integer Linear Programming. The condensing constraint options used are: non-constrained, cooling tower or geothermal system as heat sink. Results of the optimal management for a polygeneration plant placed in the Mediterranean region are presented and discussed.