The operating optimization of an ice storage system is of great value. It is usually based on the hourly cooling loads of the building to determine, the load distributions between chillers and ice storage tanks, so as to minimize the operating cost while satisfying the cooling requirement of the building. In this paper, under reasonable assumptions, linear and nonlinear optimizations are implemented respectively based on the hourly cooling loads of an office building of standard meteorological year (SMY) from May to September. It shows that under the same hourly cooling loads, the same system configuration and electricity rate, the optimal results of the two methods are different.
