Determination method of optimal operation schedule for fuel cells in collective housing

In this paper, the authors propose a power and heat interchange system using fuel cells (FCs) in a collective housing and develop a determination method of optimal operation schedule for FCs in this system. The developed method is based on tabu search which is one of non-linear optimization methods. In the developed method, the optimal operation schedule is determined by using Pareto optimal solutions from two evaluation viewpoints ((1) running cost, (2) CO ₂ emission). In order to examine the validity of the developed method, numerical simulations are carried out for the collective housing model with 12 houses in winter, summer and middle season, and the optimal operation schedules are determined.