AN OPTIMIZATION MODEL BASED DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTED ENERGY SYSTEMS PLANNING

Planning of distributed energy systems is a challenging task, involving a lot of technical, economic, environmental and political factors. In this study, an optimization model based decision support system and relevant software package have been developed to provide comprehensive analysis of economic, eneigetic and environmental issues within a distributed energy system framework. The optimization problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model with an objective to minimize overall cost of the distributed energy system including both investment and running ones. The branch and bound (B&B) algorithm in combination with the simplex one has been employed to solve the model. By enduing a user-friendly interface, the system can be easily used without the necessity to understand special expertise and knowledge on energy system planning and decision analysis. In addition, besides the distributed energy system planning, it can be also employed for examining and visualizing effects of local energy and environmental policies, regional development policies, as well as climate change policies within a local framework.