Running cost

In order to determine the optimal combination of the heating source equipments in an existing office building, simulations of six different combination cases were conducted using the newly developed mathematical models of each component. From the simulation results, the optimal combination case can reduce the energy consumption by 19.7%, running cost by 12.8% and carbon-dioxide emissions by 29.6%, compared to the present operational combination.

A methodology for optimizing the operation of heating/cooling plants with multi-heat source equipments is proposed. The methodology decides the optimal combination of the running of multiple heat source equipments to minimize the energy consumption of a heating/cooling plant. The optimal running combination is decided automatically using MATLAB® Stateflow® tool corresponding to cooling and heating loads. The energy consumption at different running combination is simulated using MATLAB® Simulink® tool. A case study is introduced to demonstrate the methodology.