Optimal Energy Management of District Cooling System and Energy Storage Systems: A Case Study

A district cooling system (DCS) consumes a significant amount of energy in any multi-vector energy system to maintain a set temperature and desired comfort level. As a result, having energy management strategies (EMSs) focusing on both operational optimization and optimal planning becomes obligatory to achieve a cost-effective DCS. The contribution of this work is twofold: (a) optimal planning of the battery energy storage system to be integrated with the DCS, which is already equipped with thermal energy storage. (b) co-optimization of the multi-chiller system within the DCS and energy storage systems conjoined with it. Both the optimization problems are formulated as bi-level and mixed-integer non-linear programs, respectively. The proposed EMSs offer near-configurability and selective decision-making that enables system operators to adopt any scheduling strategies. Finally, the developed formulations are realized with the DCS at the Gujarat International Finance-Tec City, i.e., a special economic zone as a test bench, thereby illustrating the efficacy of the proposed EMSs for the cost-effective operation of DCS and energy storage systems.