Multi-objective operation management of a multi-carrier energy system

• Integration of electrical, natural gas, and district heating networks is studied.
• A modified teaching-learning based optimization is used to solve the problem.
• A multi-objective optimization approach is analyzed.
• Results show the advantages of the integrated optimization approach.

In this paper, a multi-objective optimization approach for multi-carrier energy networks is discussed. A multi-carrier energy network is a system consists of various types of energy carrier such as electricity, natural gas, and heat. Minimizing the total cost of operation of such a system is a typical objective for optimization while another important objective is to minimize the total emission generated by the whole network. It is shown in the paper that the cost and emission functions are two opposite objectives that decreasing one of them would increase the other one and vice versa. Therefore, a multi-objective optimization should be utilized to obtain the global optima of the problem based on the priority of each objective. According to the large size of the problem in actual networks, this could be a non-linear, non-convex, non-smooth, and high-dimension optimization problem that mathematical techniques could be trapped in local minima. Hence, it is better to use evolutionary techniques instead. To do so, a fuzzy decision making method is proposed in this paper which is merged with the well-known modified teaching-learning based optimization algorithm. This approach is implemented and applied to a typical multi-carrier energy network to verify the proposed methodology.