Challenges Associated With The Construction And Operation Of Seasonal Storage For A Small Solar District Heating System: A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach

Abstract

Solar assisted district heating systems (SDHS) is a promising pathway towards sustainable transaction to clean energy production. However, the technical performance variation due to the misestimation of the seasonal storage tank (SST) combined with inadequate financial assessment and insufficient environmental impact data associated with the deployment of those innovative systems represents a big challenge for the broad implementation of SDHS in Europe. This paper evaluates the feasibility of deploying the SDHS at a small urban community sizes with tracing its techno-economic failures as well as its environmental impact. Furthermore, this study attempts to focus on the technical failure of the SST through including its geometry as well as its design parameters in the optimization framework. The capabilities of this approach are illustrated through a case study of a SDHS located in Madrid (Spain), to satify the heating demand for an urban community of 10 building with total heating demand of 1913.4 MWh/a. The optimization results show that including the SST geometry and its construction properties can effectectively enhance the SDHS feasibility, especially from the technical and environmental point of view.