Patent ID: 8903554

Claim:
A forward-looking method for determining an economically optimal energy dispatching schema to meet heating, cooling and electrical demands, comprising: (a) having an energy plant comprising a plurality of heating and cooling equipment for producing heat and cooling, wherein said equipment comprises one or more heaters, one or more chillers, one or more heat recovery chillers, one or more hot thermal storage tanks, and one or more cold thermal storage tanks, wherein said equipment consuming electricity for said heating and cooling; (b) having a facilities plant comprising a plurality of facilities consuming electricity and at least some of said facilities consuming said produced heat and cooling from said energy plant; (c) a computer-implemented program executable on a computer for determining said economically optimal energy dispatching schema to meet heating, cooling and electrical loads by said energy plant and said facilities plant, wherein said program comprises calculating said optimal energy dispatching schema for each of a plurality of incremental time segments defined in a forward-looking time period by optimizing said combined heating, cooling, and electrical loads using the steps of: (i) calculating an unmet volume of heating and cooling load that cannot be met by thermal storage discharge from said one or more hot thermal storage tanks and said one or more cold storage tanks; (ii) calculating a first complementary volume of heating and cooling production to complement said unmet volume of heating and cooling load (i) by using preproduction dispatching from: (j) said one or more heat recovery chillers, (jj) said one or more heaters, (jjj) said one or more chillers, or a combination thereof; and (iii) calculating a second complementary volume of heating and cooling production, thermal storage discharge and thermal storage recharge to complement said unmet volume that cannot be met by (i)-(ii) by using standard production dispatching from: (k) said one or more heat recovery chillers, (kk) said one or more heaters, (kkk) said one or more chillers, or a combination thereof; and (d) using said determined optimal energy dispatching schema for: (p) real time energy dispatching by said energy plant for one or more of said plurality of incremental time segments defined in said forward-looking time period, (pp) an existing energy plant optimization over said forward looking time period, (ppp) a new energy plant planning and design over said forward looking time period or any other forward-looking time period.