The district heating and cooling (DHC) system of a seawater-source heat pump is large system engineering. The investments and the operational cost of DHC pipe network are higher than a tradition system. Traditional design methods only satisfy the needs of the technology but dissatisfy the needs of the economy, which not only waste a mass of money but also bring problems to the operation, the maintenance and the management. So we build a least-annualized-cost global optimal mathematic model that comprises all constrict conditions. Furthermore, this model considers the variety of heating load and cooling load, the operational adjustment in different periods of the year. Genetic algorithm (GA) is used to obtain the optimal combinations of discrete diameters. Some operators of GA are selected to reduce the calculation time and obtain good calculation accuracy. This optimal method is used to the design of the DHC network of Xinghai Bay commercial district which is a real engineering. The design optimization can avoid the matter of the hydraulic unbalance of the system, enhance the running efficiency and greatly reduce the annualized-cost comparing with the traditional design method. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.