Electrical load tracking scheduling of a steel plant

This paper presents a scheduling solution for electrical load tracking of a steel plant. In the scheduling problem the electricity consumption of the plant is pre-specified by an energy curve. During production all tasks must be scheduled such that the total electricity consumption of all machines tracks the scheduled consumption as closely as possible while respecting all production constraints. All energy over-and underconsumption is penalized since it results in fines from the electricity producer. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming problem. The scheduling model uses a continuous time formulation. The model is tested on production data from industry. The results show that the continuous time scheduling model can be successfully applied for the electrical load tracking scheduling of a steel plant. By using this type of scheduling the plant owner can potentially minimize over-and underconsumption and thereby reduce his costs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.