Two-Stage Mathematical Programming Approach for Steelmaking Process Scheduling Under Variable Electricity Price

The steelmaking process scheduling problem by considering variable electricity price (SMSPVEP) was investigated. A decomposition approach was proposed for the SMSPVEP. At the first stage, mathematical programming was utilized to minimize the maximum completion time for each cast without considering variable electricity price. At the second stage, based on obtained relative schedules of all casts, a mathematical model was formulated with an objective of minimizing the energy cost for all casts scheduling problem. The two-stage models were tested on randomly generated instances based on the practical process in a Chinese steelmaking plant. Computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.