Optimal energy exchange of an industrial cogeneration in a day-ahead electricity market

This paper addresses an optimal strategy for the daily energy exchange of a 22-MW combined-cycle cogeneration plant of an industrial factory operating in a liberalized electricity market. The optimization problem is formulated as a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming Problem (MILP) that maximizes the profit from energy exchange of the cogeneration, and is subject to the technical constraints and the industrial demand profile. The integer variables are associated with export or import of electricity whereas the real variables relate to the power output of gas and steam turbines, and to the electricity purchased from or sold to the market. The proposal is applied to a real cogeneration plant in Spain where the detailed cost function of the process is obtained. The problem is solved using a large-scale commercial package and the results are discussed and compared with different predefined scheduling strategies.