Optimal Expansion and Reconstruction of Heat Supply Systems: Methodology and Practice

The paper addresses the issue of optimal expansion and reconstruction of heat supply systems, which includes a set of general and relatively specific problems. Therefore, a comprehensive approach to their solving is required to obtain a technically admissible and economically sound result. Solving the problem suggests search for effective directions in expansion of a system in terms of optimal allocation of new heat sources, their type, output, operating area; construction of new heat networks, their schemes and parameters; optimal detection of “bottlenecks†in the system and ways of their elimination (expansion, dismantling, replacement, strengthening of heat pipeline sections, construction of pumping stations and other components of heat supply networks). The authors present a mathematical statement of the problem, its decomposition into separate subproblems and an integrated technique to solve it. Consideration is given to a real problem solved for a real heat supply system. A set of arising problems is presented. The application of developed methodological and computational tools is shown.