Logo

The 14th International Modelica Conference
Linköping, September 20-24, 2021

[Practical Information] [Tutorials and Vendor Sessions] [Proceedings] [Modelica Libraries] [FMI User Meeting] [Archives] [Journal Special Issue (open for submissions until 2022-07-31)]

Papers by Nicholas Long

Title: A Case Study on Condenser Water Supply Temperature Optimization with a District Cooling Plant
Authors: Kathryn Hinkelman, Jing Wang, Chengliang Fan, Wangda Zuo, Antoine Gautier, Michael Wetter and Nicholas Long
Abstract: District cooling (DC) continues to proliferate due to increasing global cooling demands and economies of scale benefits; however, most district-scale modeling has focused on heating, and to the best of our knowledge, researchers have yet to model cooling plants featuring waterside economizers in DC settings. With the popular Modelica Buildings library expanding its capabilities to district scale, this study is one of the first to demonstrate how the open-source models can be used for detailed energy and control analysis of a DC plant. For a real-world case study, we developed and calibrated high-fidelity models for a DC system central plant at a college campus in Colorado, USA, and we optimized the condenser water supply temperature (CWST) setpoint for a DC plant across multiple time horizons using the Optimization library in Dymola. Results indicate that annual CWST optimization saves 4.7% annual plant energy, with less than 1% of additional energy savings gained through daily optimization. This confirms previous studies' findings that high frequency CWST optimizations are not necessary for the studied system.
Keywords: District Cooling, Optimization, Chiller Plant, Waterside Economizer, Modelica Buildings Library
Paper: full paper Creative Commons License
Bibtex:
@InProceedings{modelica.org:Hinkelman:2021,
  title = "{A Case Study on Condenser Water Supply Temperature Optimization with a District Cooling Plant}",
  author = {Kathryn Hinkelman and Jing Wang and Chengliang Fan and Wangda Zuo and Antoine Gautier and Michael Wetter and Nicholas Long},
  pages = {587--595},
  doi = {10.3384/ecp21181587},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th International Modelica Conference},
  location = {Link\"oping, Sweden},
  editor = {Martin Sj\"olund and Lena Buffoni and Adrian Pop and Lennart Ochel},
  isbn = {978-91-7929-027-6},
  issn = {1650-3740},
  month = sep,
  series = {Link\"oping Electronic Conference Proceedings},
  number = {181},
  publisher = {Modelica Association and Link\"oping University Electronic Press},
  year = {2021}
}