Automated Selection of Economically Viable Operating Conditions for Industrial Power Plants

The paper considers the construction of an equivalent model of an industrial thermal power plant, characterized by non-blocking thermal circuits, the presence of production and heating extractions from turbines, the use of a dissimilar fuel in a mixture as a primary energy carrier. The model is built on the basis of a modified sequential equivalent method in combination with the dynamic programming method. The optimization criterion is the minimum total cost of steam used for power generation, production and heating extraction. The model is, in general terms, a set of possible power output by turbine generators and the corresponding thermal loads of boilers, reflecting the individual optimal loads of power equipment. When constructing the model, the nominal and operational parameters of the equipment were taken into account, which were used as operating restrictions. In order to speed up the process of calculating the model, the developed approach is implemented in the original software KATRAN-OptActivePower, which allows an automated assessment of the optimal load of boiler units and turbine generators of industrial power plants.