Application of the particle swarm optimization to the design of heating and cooling plants of buildings

The combined heat and power (CHP) provides electricity as well as heating and cooling, which consequently leads to a complexity of the design and operation of the system. It requires, therefore, the optimization of parameters such as the number of machines and the capacity of equipment. Generally, the problem can be expressed as a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem, and a lot of efforts would be required to solve it. In the paper, we present a different approach to the optimization of CHP including heating and cooling plant, using the particle swarm optimization. The purpose of the study is to find the optimum design of heating and cooling plant of buildings with respect to the type of chillers and the number of machines. The particle swarm optimization combined with a simulation of the system is applied to the minimization of the primary energy consumption and the annual cost. The results show the optimum system constitutions for a large-sized building with CHP.