OPTIMAL OPERATION OF A COGENERATION PLANT IN COMBINATION WITH ELECTRIC HEAT-PUMPS

An operational problem is discussed for a gas turbine cogeneration pla nt in combination with a heat pump/thermal storage system that utilize s time-of-use pricing of the electrical utility. An optimal planning m ethod is presented by which the operational policy of constituent equi pment is determined so as to minimize the daily operational cost. An a lgorithm is proposed to solve this optimization problem efficiently by combining the dynamic programming method with the mixed-integer progr amming one. A case study is carried out to investigate the effect of i ntroducing a heat pump system into a cogeneration plant.