(109a) Reduce Energy Consumption in Utility Centers with Real-Time Dispatch Optimization

While or because natural gas pricing is at historic lows, electrical energy costs are getting more attention.  Data centers are the fastest growing industry sector in energy consumption and alone consume a measurable fraction of total US generated electricity.  Semiconductor manufacturing, like many peers (automotive paint shops…) have tight environmental specifications that drive utility costs to be a significant fraction of production costs.  First-stage energy reduction solutions have been accomplished and there is increasing interest in an intelligent control system that can dispatch chillers, compressors, thermal storage, turbines or combined cycle units as efficiently as possible and to do this automatically.   Real-time optimization or dispatch optimization of available equipment is designed to drive unit selection and unit loading to the best performance curve balance based on current conditions and demands to minimal energy costs.

The hurdle with traditional solutions has been that accurate models needed for ideal selections are difficult to sustain.  But modern software environments have continued to make this easier than ever so that a decision hurdle may be now overcome.  A strategy will be presented to reduce installation and maintenance costs and efforts leveraging graphical optimization with a robust MINLP solver.