[TRNSYS-users] (PLEASE)optimization of a solar heating system combined with dual-source heatpump

Thu Apr 14 13:54:30 PDT 2016

Dear all,

For the design solutions “found” by optimization to be useful, the simulation must accurately represent the reality and the “cost” that was minimized must effectively represent the overall “performance” of a system. Trusting simulation requires to carefully look at detailed results in simple cases (not just yearly energy or “cost”). 

I would therefore not encourage anyone, especially students, to “throw in all their design variables” into any optimization algorithm as soon as their simulation is ready. Jeff’s approach sounds very good to me, start with design parameters that make sense, check that your results and cost function makes sense, and explore (manually or through parametric runs) some design configurations. That way you will learn how the system is affected by its parameters and get a chance to check the plausibility of your results. I am willing to bet that, in the process, you will find some user errors, and possibly identify some bugs/limitations in the models you use. Then as a last step, you could indeed try a multi-objective, multi-parameter optimization, to check whether you might have missed some possible configurations.

Regarding the life cycle cost that always increases with solar collector area: in some (many?) contexts energy savings and renewable energy are in fact not economically viable without subsidies. So yes, it does happen that the “optimum” is not to have any solar collectors. In such cases it can be useful for the client to impose a minimum level of savings (or solar fraction) and formulate the design question as “find me the most cost-effective solution that reaches a minimum solar fraction of …”, rather than “find me the lowest cost design”. Another option is to express the cost of the useful renewable energy over the life cycle (levelized life cycle cost, in $/kWh for example). Again, manually exploring some design options will help you assess whether your cost function is appropriate.

And for those who have registered for the workshop on optimization with TRNSYS at the eSim conference, don’t worry… I will talk about optimization, but adding a grain of salt never hurts.

Michaël Kummert, Polytechnique Montréal

From: TRNSYS-users [mailto:trnsys-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Dr Yi Zhang
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 05:47
To: 'TRNSYS users mailing list at OneBuilding.org' <trnsys-users at lists.onebuilding.org>
Subject: Re: [TRNSYS-users] (PLEASE)optimization of a solar heating system combined with dual-source heatpump

Ware (?), as you can see, energy consumption and cost may be on very different scales. It is not logical to add them together to form an objective. If the cost numbers are much higher than the energy numbers, the combined objective will be dominated by the cost results, thus dictating the minimum collector area outcome. You have two options here, to use the life cycle cost alone as the objective (as the energy cost should have been factored in), or to switch to a multi-object approach.

Jeff, optimisation should not be that hard. I would suggest trying out jEPlus+EA or other GA-based tools. In most cases you can throw in all your design variables and let the algorithms do the hard work. The problem with the tiered search strategy is that you are likely to narrow down the results prematurely (i.e. within the ballpark) and miss solutions elsewhere. The magic with optimisation is that it can give good solutions that you have never expected to exist. :-) 

Regards,

Yi

From: TRNSYS-users [mailto:trnsys-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Free
Sent: 14 April 2016 09:38
To: trnsys-users
Subject: Re: [TRNSYS-users] (PLEASE)optimization of a solar heating system combined with dual-source heatpump

Dear Yi, Jeff, Marko

Sincerely thank you for your answers!

The PSO in GenOpt is a Single - objective algorithm,i have tried to set the object function as the sum of energy consumption in a year or the life circle cost of the system, and the result  coincided with Jeff's reply exactly. I will try a parametric analysis for system to find the problem as well.

Here is another question for Jeff:

<We'll use the Hooke-Jeeves algorithm on the tank volume and array area to get us in the right ballpark (with slope = latitude and south facing collectors at standard flow rates)>

I am eager to realize the object function and the criterion that you used for optimization，can you give me some suggestions for the unfavorable situation i struggled in?

Sorry to bother you again.

Ware 

BR

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