Optimal scheduling for power-intensive processes under time-sensitive electricity prices

I.E. GROSSMANN; CARLOS A. MENDEZ; N. BASAN

Proceedings of the 27th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering ? ESCAPE 27

Elsevier

Año: 2017; p. 1423 - 1428

The competitiveness of power-intensive industries is highly tied to their ability to adjustproduction according to time-sensitive electricity prices. A classic example are AirSeparation Units (ASUs), where large, electric-power air compressors are used to reachcryogenic temperatures. Due to the volatility nature of the energy markets, there issignificant opportunity to reduce production costs by scheduling production during thecheapest hours of the day. In this work, a mixed-integer linear model (MILP) model ispresented based on a discrete-time scheduling formulation that allows modeling andoptimizing operating decisions for any process under time-sensitive energy prices. Themain goal is to find an optimal production schedule over a given time horizon thatguarantees product demand satisfaction and that minimizes total energy cost. The novelformulation used to model transitions between operating modes results in a veryefficient and robust model. The model is applied to a simplified industrial case Theresults show optimal solutions for the proposed methodology with modestcomputational effort.