A Simulation Method Based on the Candidate Operation Strategies for the Combined Cooling, Heat, and Power (CCHP) System

With the change of the distributed Combined cooling, heat, and power (CCHP) system operation environment, such as the operation under the power market, CCHP needs to adopt the operation strategy based on cost minimization instead of the traditional following thermal load strategy (FTL). However, the current CCHP system simulation adopts FTL or FEL or a combination of the two; whether these strategies have the least cost has not been confirmed. In this paper, all kinds of operation strategies of the CCHP with two cooling methods are investigated according to the KKT conditions (Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions) of the optimal operation model. Among all the feasible operation strategies, most of them do not meet the KKT condition, and only 43 strategies may be the optimal ones that constitute candidate set. The conditions of the optimal operation strategy in the candidate set are obtained, and it is easy to calculate, so the optimal operation strategy can be easily selected from the candidate set. Some previously unnoticed strategies, for example, TEWM, PE-FPG, FTL-R, and FEL-L, may become optimal. A rule-based CCHP simulation method is established that selects the strategy with minimal cost as the optimal strategy from the candidate strategy set. The presented method has small time consumption and can simulate the optimal operation. The case study verified the characteristics of the proposed simulation method.