Modeling and Control of Co-generation Power Plants: A Hybrid System Approach

In this paper the optimization of a combined cycle power plant is accomplished by exploiting hybrid systems, i.e. systems evolving according to continuous dynamics, discrete dynamics, and logic rules. The possibility of turning on/off the gas and steam turbine, the operat- ing constraints (minimum up and down times) and the different types of start up of the turbines characterize the hybrid behavior of a combined cycle power plant. In order to model both the continuous/discrete dy- namics and the switching between different operating conditions we use the framework of Mixed Logic Dynamical systems. Next, we recast the economic optimization problem as a Model Predictive Control (MPC) problem, that allows us to optimize the plant operations by taking into account the time variability of both prices and electricity/steam de- mands. Because of the presence of integer variables, the MPC scheme is formulated as a mixed integer linear program that can be solved in an efficient way by using commercial solvers.