Multitime-interval scheduling for daily operation of a two-cogeneration system with evolutionary programming

This paper proposes a multitime-interval scheduling for the daily operation of a two-cogeneration system connected with auxiliary devices, which include auxiliary boilers, heat stop-age tanks, electricity chargers and independent generators. The efficiency of a cogeneration system depends on the production of thermal and electrical energy which is modelled with a quadratic equation obtained by the least-squares method. Evolutionary programming (EP) is used to establish operation scheduling for the cogeneration system. For this complex scheduling problem with multi-variables in multitime-intervals, the optimal operational cost for the cogeneration system obtained with EP is much lower than the initial feasible solution obtained by trial and error. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.