Optimal placement and sizing of heat pumps and heat only boilers in a coupled electricity and heating networks

Multi-energy systems are reported to have a better environmental and economic performance relative to the conventional, single-carrier, energy systems. Electrification of district heating networks using heat pumps and combined heat and power technologies is one such example. Due to lack of suitable modelling tools, however, the sizing and optimal placement of heat pumps is always done only from the heating network point of view which sometimes compromises the electricity network. This paper proposes an integrated optimization algorithm to overcome such limitation. A load flow model based on an extended energy hub approach is combined with a nested particle swarm optimization algorithm. A waste to energy combined heat and power plant, heat pumps (HPs), heat only boiler (HOB), solar photovoltaic, wind turbines and imports from the neighborhood grids are considered in the case studies. The results show that optimal placement and sizing of HPs and a HOB using the proposed methodology avoids an unacceptable voltage profiles and overloading of the electricity distribution network, which could arise while optimizing only from the heating network point of view. It also shows that up to 41.2% of the electric loss and 5% of the overall operating cost could be saved. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.