Optimal chiller loading including transients

TL;DR

This paper presents a dynamic optimization framework for chiller plant operation that accounts for transient effects, leading to more efficient energy use compared to static methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optimization approach that considers transient effects and expands decision variables for better chiller load management.

Findings

Reduced energy consumption with the new dynamic method

Effective handling of transient effects in chiller scheduling

Comparison shows benefits over static approaches

Abstract

Scheduling and loading of chillers in a multi-chiller plant is considered. A new framework is introduced considering an extended set of independent variables for the optimization problem of energy consumption. In this way the number of decision variables is increased, providing extra degrees of freedom to optimize cooling plant operation. The dynamic effects due to transients arising from switching on and off of units are usually not considered in the literature dealing with Optimal Chiller Loading/Sequencing which is restricted to the static case. In this paper, these effects are treated in a way that results in a manageable optimization problem. A Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation solution is deployed for the problem and the proposed method is compared with a similar but static approach showing the benefits in terms of reduced energy consumption.