In the quest to increase the share of renewable and residual energy sources in our energy system, and to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, district heating networks and seasonal thermal energy storage have the potential to play a key role. Different studies prove the techno-economic potential of these technologies but, due to the added complexity, it is challenging to design and control such systems. This paper describes an integrated optimal design and control algorithm, which is applied to the design of a district heating network with solar thermal collectors, seasonal thermal energy storage and excess heat injection. The focus is mostly on the choice of the size and location of these technologies and less on the network layout optimisation. The algorithm uses a two-layer program, namely with a design optimisation layer implemented as a genetic algorithm and an optimal control evaluation layer implemented using the Python optimal control problem toolbox called modesto. This optimisation strategy is applied to the fictional district energy system case of the city of Genk in Belgium. We show that this algorithm can find optimal designs with respect to multiple objective functions and that even in the cheaper, less renewable solutions, seasonal thermal energy storage systems are installed in large quantities.

The design and operational optimisation of fourth generation district heating networks is a crucial step towards highly renewable energy systems of the future. In order to optimise such complex systems, a toolbox modesto (multi-objective district energy systems toolbox for optimisation) is being developed. Seasonal thermal energy storage is an essential technology to allow larger shares of renewable energy sources, yet large computational power is required for its representation in full-year operational optimisations, as a step towards district energy system optimal design. To decrease computational complexity, a technique with representative days able to include seasonal thermal energy storage systems is developed and validated. This methodology combines different part-solutions from literature, but also adds a novel aspect to safeguard the chronology of the optimisation problem. To validate the approach, the design optimisation of a fictitious solar district heating system with seasonal thermal energy storage is compared to different representative day optimisations in two steps. The operational optimisation is a linear optimisation problem, implemented using modesto; the design optimisation is built as a genetic algorithm, optimising the size of the storage and solar systems in the network. The validation exercise is done for the operational and for the design optimisation separately. This comparative study shows that modelling with representative days adequately mimics the behaviour for the presented case. Furthermore, a solution speed-up in the order of 10–30 times is shown for the representative optimisations with respect to the full year optimisation, in line with the reduction of the number of variables.