Energy-based modeling and dissipativity analysis of district heating systems

The decarbonization of the heating sector has the potential for considerably reducing the amount of anthropogenic emissions contributing to global warming. Modern district heating systems, which can incorporate various types of energy sources and storage devices, are considered key enablers for transitioning toward a more sustainable heating sector. However, in contrast to conventional system setups based on fossil fuels, the robust and efficient incorporation of heat from distributed and renewable sources requires an increased coordination among heat production, storage, and consumption devices, which is not offered by classic district heating system control standards. In this chapter, we contribute toward the advancement of modern district heating system control frameworks via physics and graph-theoretic based district heating systems modeling and through the analysis (and synthesis) of dissipativity-based qualitative properties (controllers) that have been crucial for controlling complex and large-scale networked systems in general by virtue of the offered scalability, robustness, and stability guarantees