Conference Paper

Proceedings of Building Simulation 2021: 17th Conference of IBPSA

Facility location problem in thermal network design

Tristan André Rey, Jessen Page
HES-SO, Switzerland

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26868/25222708.2021.30608
Abstract: Energy transition requires efficient energy production and distribution systems. For this purpose, a methodology is developed to design a thermal network which extracts the energy of ground water and distributes it optimally within a neighborhood. The first step of the methodology consists in a geographical clustering of the buildings, aiming to reduce the complexity of the problem. Then, knowing the energy demand of the neighborhood and potential locations for ground water wells, the resolution of an assignment problem (capacitated facility location splittable problem - CFLS problem) is performed. Each ground water well can be drilled or not and has a specific amount of power available. The goal of the resolution is then to determine which drillings need to be executed and which buildings they should supply, while minimizing the total cost of the operation. To do so, this assignment problem is solved using a bespoke solving method and the results are compared to those obtained with a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) based solving method. The methodology ends with the design of the topology of a thermal network. This design process uses street network data and is based on the resolution of a minimum Steiner tree.
Keywords: Thermal network design, Capacitated facility location splittable problem, mixed-integer linear programming, minimum Steiner tree
Pages: 350 - 357
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