Urban Energy Supply Chain: A District Heating Case

Ana Raquel Russo de Carvalho

Key information

Authors:

Ana Raquel Russo de Carvalho (Ana Raquel Russo de Carvalho Dias)

Supervisors:

Ana Paula Ferreira Dias Barbosa Póvoa (Ana Paula Ferreira Dias Barbosa Póvoa)

Published in

12/03/2007

Abstract

Energy has become one of the most crucial problems in the modern society which must be studied and solved. In this work, we present a model that optimizes an urban energy supply chain. This study will not focus on a specific area of the supply chain such as production, distribution or storage but aims to develop quantitative tools that can support strategic decisions in heating supply chain design and operation. The suggested mathematical model delineates the optimal configuration of a heating supply chain to fulfil the demand within one region (e. g. city). The decisions to be determined, by this model, were: the location, number and capacity of the boilers to be installed; the required production of each boiler and the network configuration (location of pipelines); flow rate of energy throughout the network and its direction as well as the total cost of the heating supply chain network. Moreover, the developed model is mainly driven by heating demand, which is assumed to be previously known. Illustrative examples were solved.