Operational optimization is the key to energy reduction of the district heating (DH) system. Poor hydraulic performances of the DH network will largely increase the energy consumption. However, for most meshed DH networks with multiple heat sources, the optimal hydraulic conditions are usually not achieved. In this paper, the hydraulic performance optimization problem of meshed DH network with multiple heat sources was proposed. In order to solve the problem, the General Reduced Gradient (GRG) algorithm was adopted to minimize the total pump power through optimizing the pump frequencies and substation valve openings of the DH network. The hydraulic performances of the GRG algorithm based optimal control (OC) strategy were compared with the traditional constant pressure difference control (CPDC) and the constant speed control (CSC) strategies. Results shows that in comparison with the CPDC and CSC strategy, the total pump power can be reduced by 20% and 65% respectively, when applying the OC strategy. And the hydraulic intersection point of the DH network was changeable to reallocate the serving areas of heat sources and optimize the total pump power. Besides, increasing the pump efficiency without considering the hydraulic constraints of the DH network may not lead to optimal conditions. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.