A Study on Operation of Heat Pump Cluster Based on Particle Swarm Optimization

To solve the operation challenge of heat pump clusters in district energy systems, this paper introduces the operation optimization approach based on the hybrid model of the heat pump clusters consisting of both mechanism-based and data-driven modeling. First, we use graph theory to build the mechanism-based heating network model. Second, we use the water supply temperature, water flow rate and load of heat pump as variables to build the data-driven model. The two models are used together as the basis of cluster operation optimization. Third, we introduce particle swarm optimization algorithm to search the optimal operation schemes of a target district energy system driven by heat pumps. The target district energy system locates in “Zhongtian Future Ark” park in Guiyang. The testing results show that such an approach could realize energy-saving around 8% once the optimized scheme is applied.