Energy Flow Optimization in Multicarrier Systems

In this paper, a generalized heuristic approach is proposed to solve the optimal power flow problem in multicarrier energy systems. This technique omits the use of any extra variable, such as dispatch factors or dummy variables required for conventional techniques. The unified proposed approach can be utilized with all evolutionary algorithms. Modeling hub devices with constant efficiency may produce a considerable error in finding the actual optimal operating point of the whole network. However, using variable efficiency model adds complexity to the conventional methods while increasing the computation-demand of these techniques, but this target can be simply implemented by the proposed scheme. A multicarrier energy system consists of an electrical, a natural gas, and a district heating network is analyzed by the proposed algorithm using the modified teaching-learning-based optimization method. Results validate the utilized approach and show that it can successfully reach the global optimal solution of the problem.