Unleashing district cooling potential through design optimization

Due to the increasing cooling demand, it is necessary to invest in more efficient technologies, in order to limit the unsustainable rise of electricity consumptions and greenhouse gas emissions. District cooling networks can be a suitable solution, especially in areas with large energy densities. These systems are indeed characterized by higher performances, thanks to the installation of highly efficient industrial equipment. Moreover, the overall demand profile of a district energy system tends to be smoother compared to the one of single users. Hence, production units are better sized and operate close to design conditions and with higher performances. On the other hand, district cooling is characterized by large capital costs that prevent its diffusion. Therefore, if a network is not properly designed, it may not be enough competitive with the alternative technologies. In this context, optimization tools can help to unveil the hidden potential for district cooling and are fundamental to design cost effective networks, maximizing the advantages related to these systems. In this work a heuristic algorithm for the design optimization of district cooling networks has been implemented. It has the goal of minimizing the total costs and selecting the best network configuration for a certain urban context, simultaneously optimizing the set of users to be connected and the position and size of production units and storages. Through the application of the model to different case studies, it has been observed how the economic savings can sensibly increase thanks to the optimization tool.