The question on the optimal development of the heat sources in the developing heat-supply systems (HSSs) is considered. The current state of research in the field in question is analyzed. It is noted that this issue has aroused increased interest in recent years. The description and mathematical formulation of the problem of optimizing the structure of the heat sources in the developing HSSs are provided. The best distribution of the load between the former is determined and the choice of the optimal parameters of the heat-supply networks under permissible technical, economic, and ecological restrictions is made. For the first time, the problem has been formulated and implemented using the method of directed search for possible variants of the heat source’s power and equipment content in a preplanned redundant heat-source configuration that was previously used to search for the best configuration of the heat-supply network. To devise redundant configurations and subsequently calculate them, methodological approaches oriented towards the construction of P-graphs and energy hubs that have been developed in recent years can be successfully applied. Every heat-source structure variant outlined within the framework of the redundant configuration competes with other variants not only in terms of the minimum costs but also in terms of the minimum impact on the environment. The proposed methodology was implemented in the form of a software package that enables the user to interactively communicate with the digital model of the system to obtain a solution for the development and reconstruction of the HSS under investigation. The practical application of the methodological and computational tools to solve the problem of the development of heat-supply systems is exemplified by the configuration of the heat-supply system of the settlement of Magistralnyi, Irkutsk region.

In the article multi-criteria problem of optimization of heat energy sources is formulated, which provides reliable and safe heat supply to consumers with minimal impact of heat supply facilities on the environment. There are two stages of its solution. Firstly, via decomposition method the problem is divided into two sub problems. Secondly, via the weighting coefficients method and the ɛ-constraints one these sub problems reduce to finding a single criterion. The algorithm of the problem solution by the ɛ-constraints method is described. Application of the proposed methods to a real case of heat supply system is given.

Nowadays, multi-energy systems play an important role in satisfying the ever-increasing demand for different energy resources. At the same time, the sustainable development of such systems is usually based on the structural and parametric optimization (synthesis) of their infrastructures. There is a large spectrum of specialized optimization tools for the study of single energy systems. At the same time, the problem of modeling the interaction between single energy systems remains challenging. Therefore, it is imperative to develop an efficient experimental environment to effectively implement the synthesis of optimal configurations of multi-energy systems. Microgrids are a special case of multi-energy systems. They provide a higher level of energy supply compared to the main grids and enhance their reliability and resilience. In this context, we propose a framework and subject-oriented environment for the synthesis of optimal microgrid configurations in a reasonable time considering the available computational resources. The basis of the environment is a service-oriented application. The modeling and optimization of the studied systems is performed by means of scientific workflows. Our results complement and develop known approaches to automate the modeling of multi-energy systems using their typical models and specially selected optimization algorithms corresponding to these models. We have successfully tested our approach for the synthesis of optimal microgrid configurations on the case study of a specific microgrid providing heat and electricity to a small settlement.

The paper gives a general statement of the problem of choosing the structure of energy sources of urban heat supply systems to meet technical, economic and environmental constraints. One of the effective approaches to solve such a problem is the construction and optimization of redundant schemes of technological structures of energy sources. A model based on the theory of energy hubs is presented as one of the methods for constructing the redundant scheme. The application of the theory of energy hubs for selecting the types of energy sources allows, in an enlarged form, selecting the main equipment of energy sources, and evaluating technical and economic indices, and the degree of negative impact on the environment (at the level of gross emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere). A case study of modeling a redundant system for selecting the optimal structure of energy sources, considering the minimum atmospheric pollution, is illustrated.

The study outlines the concept of the structure of heat sources of developing heating systems and states the problem of searching through structures of heat sources of maximum redundancy for the optimal one. As one of the techniques of solving this problem, the authors propose to split the process of designing heating systems into multiple stages. Within the scope of the above-stated problem, the difficult part is the need to create an automated system to solve the entirety of problems arising at these stages and to reconcile them with each other. We provide a brief overview of the the available software package that we propose to integrate into the process of solving and we underline the complex nature of the interaction of individual software components between each other. The authors propose an approach in the form of the computational experiment setup that enables to consistently coordinate computational procedures with each other. The approach is based on the concept of the energy hub as its theoretical backbone, while in terms of the software implementation it is an instance of an automated information system.

Currently, the development of approaches that enhance the resilience of integrated energy systems is a highly relevant research direction. Such approaches are based on the structural and parametric optimization of integrated energy systems. Typically, these approaches are closely tied to a specific spatio-temporal scope and a particular optimization method. The application of developed approaches at other scopes often leads to a significant increase in computation time and a possible reduction of solution accuracy. This problem is due to the complexity of energy system optimization models and the differences between them. To solve this problem, we have developed a methodology for selecting the most suitable methods for the design of system resilience at a given spatio-temporal scope. The proposed methodology is based on testing methods within a specialized testbed and a multi-criteria analysis of test results. The indicators for evaluating the methods include both summary metrics of resilience and efficiency parameters of computational resources. The benefits of the proposed methodology are illustrated for the resilient design with respect to national and local integrated energy systems. Several dozen methods from the well-known Parallel Global Multiobjective Optimizer library were efficiently tested in up to 10 hours. The analysis of the testing results was performed with different multi-criteria algorithms regarding the prioritization of the indicators.