The project CHP-swarm investigates the potential of decentralized, biogas fueld CHP (Combined Heat and Power) plants to provide balancing power for fluctuating PV (PhotoVoltaics) loads. Among other things, at the ETHZ-LAV Energy Systems Group, we are charged with selecting suitable production sites. That amounts to a combinatorial optimization problem, constrained by the regionally limited biogas potentials, the heat demand at intended installation sites and grid constraints.
This repository is home of a side-project in which we explore ACO (Ant Colony Optimization) as a promising means to tackling said and similar problems - essentially, we aim at non-linear optimal design of energy systems. Please refer to the included notebook for a more verbose introduction and the main ideas behind the project.