Figure 3 Hybrid Power Plant EMS, web-based graphical user interface for real-time optimal operation and monitoring 2
operational site conditions and environment, like weather, power/fuels market conditions, process energy demand, and so on. • Allow the analysis and monitoring of current and past energy efficiency and performance of the site and renewable sources. • Support the optimal energy scheduling, taking into consideration availability, forecasted consumption, variability in electricity prices and inventories, as well as multi-period related decisions. • Automate the integration of the optimal schedule and real-time recommendations to relieve schedulers and operators from complex and time-consuming decision-making activities. • Target autonomous operation in the short and medium term, allowing a smooth information flow between the different decision levels, going from planning to the regulatory control layer. Multi-period optimisation Real-time optimisation and scheduling, working together and properly aligned, is paramount to properly manage energy systems at the minimum cost, while continuously reducing GHG emissions. The inherent variability of the renewable energy sources and electricity market prices, along with the need to coordinate energy storage,
conventional production backup and other time- dependent constraints, make optimal energy scheduling a key and pivotal need for tools that aim at managing these energy systems. The multi-period optimisation (MPO) technology accounts for restrictions that affect multiple time periods, usually in the future. It is indispensable for making decisions involving energy inventories, time-sensitive operating constraints (such as minimum downtime or uptime for pieces of equipment like boilers and gas turbines and their sequencing, and so on), or the start/stop schedule of complex equipment (for example, gas turbines with their related heat recovery steam generation and steam turbo generator). It is useful for different types of renewable energy systems. A few examples showing some of the potential uses are: ➊ Concentrated solar power: to manage the energy storage and the start/stop of the system (pumping of the heating fluid, steam turbines) as a function of the solar intensity and other specific constraints. ➋ Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy: managing the energy storage as a function of the predicted solar intensity and other specific restrictions and constraints. Decision variables could involve start/ stop of ancillary or backup conventional systems,
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