Decision rules for economic summer-shutdown of production units in large district heating systems

Magnus Dahl, Adam Brun and Gorm B. Andresen

Applied Energy, 2017, vol. 208, issue C, No S0306261917313223, 1128-1138

Abstract: Seasonal load variations in district heating systems are so large that some production units become superfluous during summer operations. There is great economic potential in shutting down these units during summer. The economic benefit of summer shutdown is highly dependent on the timing of the shutdown decision. The optimal shutdown and start-up dates depend on complex weather patterns and vary significantly from year to year. This study introduces three classes of decision rules to help production planners perform economically optimal summer shutdown: a fixed date rule, a heat load based rule and a load based rule augmented with weather forecasts. These decision rules are tested using 38years of hourly weather data to simulate the heat load in Aarhus, Denmark. The large amount of weather data allows for the creation of highly robust decision rules that account for rare, but costly weather conditions. A fixed date rule allows for planning very far ahead and can reap 90.7% of the potential economic benefit of summer shutdown. A heat load based decision rule can salvage 95.8% of the potential shutdown savings at the cost of shorter planning horizons. Augmenting the load based decision rule with 15day weather forecasts can boost the performance to 96.5%.

Keywords: District heating; Decision rules; Long-term production planning; Heat load forecasting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261917313223
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:208:y:2017:i:c:p:1128-1138

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.09.040

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().