Energy Systems Design, Operation and Management: On the Concept of Optimisation and/or Improvement

This chapter starts from a discussion about the concept of optimisation in the field of energy systems, pointing out that the objective of optimising a system involves not only its design, but also its operation and management according to the requirements suggested by the technical, economic and social context. The classical optimisation techniques may not be viable when many conflicting aspects must be considered and a mathematical description of the problem is very hard and/or can be performed through complex and time-consuming calculations. In this case a step-by-step procedure of progressive improvement can be more convenient. A procedure like this is presented here. It is based on the use of suitable theories and indicators, able to assess the energetic, economic and environmental performance of a system and address the designer or the policy maker towards a given kind of process as an alternative to another one. Particular attention is paid to the environmental impact: both local and global environmental performance of the system is evaluated; according to this viewpoint, the environment is both a source (of resources and information) and a sink (of energy and materials). The procedure can be used to both optimise the configuration and the regulation criteria of an existing or planned plant and choose the most sustainable energetic strategy in a given local context. The method is very flexible: so, it can meet the analyst’s (designer, operator, policy maker) requirements and could be further extended by adding new evaluation parameters. The originality of the procedure is not the proposal of new methods of analysis, but the sequential step-by-step use of different techniques to improve the quality of an energy system starting from a given initial configuration. Some examples of application of this approach to different systems, according to different objectives, are presented at the end of the chapter