Development of a General-Purpose Optimal Operational Planning System for Energy Supply Plants

Abstract

A general-purpose planning system is developed for assessing optimal operational strategies of energy supply plants. This system has three main functions : ( a ) data registration, ( b ) graphic editing, and ( c ) automatic programming and optimization calculation. Data on performance characteristics of equipment, tariff of input energy, energy demands, and ambient conditions are registered to form a data base that can be cited from a graphic editor. The graphic editor enables flexible and easy change of plant configurations for planners to investigate many alternative configurations of energy supply plants. Data on the plant configuration composed by the graphic editor are arranged automatically to carry out an optimization calculation, in which the operational strategy is determined so as to minimize the hourly operational cost subject to the energy demand requirement. Through an example, it is ascertained that the system is a useful tool for operational planning of energy supply plants from the viewpoints of rationality and time or labor reduction.