In the process industries, cooling capacity is an important enabler for the facility to manufacture on specification product. The cooling water network is an important part of the over-all cooling system of the facility. In this paper a cooling water circuit consisting of 3 cooling towers in parallel, 2 cooling water pumps in parallel, and 11 heat exchangers in parallel, is modelled. The model developed is based on first principles and captures the dynamic, non-linear nature of the plant. The modelled plant is further complicated by continuous, as well as Boolean process variables, giving the model a hybrid nature. Energy consumption is included in the model as it is a very important parameter for plant operation. The model is fitted to real industry data by using a particle swarm optimisation approach. The model is suitable to be used for optimisation and control purposes. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.