A Critical Review of the Modeling and Optimization of Combined Heat and Power Dispatch

Combined heat and power (CHP) systems are attracting increasing attention for their ability to improve the economics and sustainability of the electricity system. Determining how to best operate these systems is difficult because they can consist of many generating units whose operation is governed by complex nonlinear physics. Mathematical programming is a useful tool to support the operation of CHP systems, and has been the subject of substantial research attention since the early 1990s. This paper critically reviews the modeling and optimization work that has been done on the CHP economic dispatch problem, and the CHP economic and emission dispatch problem. A summary of the common models used for these problems is provided, along with comments on future modeling work that would beneficial to the field. The majority of optimization approaches studied for CHP system operation are metaheuristic algorithms. A discussion of the limitations and benefits of metaheuristic algorithms is given. Finally, a case study optimizing five classic CHP system test instances demonstrates the advantages of the using deterministic global search algorithms over metaheuristic search algorithms.