Nemet A., Hegyháti M., Klemeš J., Friedler F., 2012, Increasing Solar Energy Utilisation by Rescheduling Operations with Heat and Electricity Demand, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 29, 1483-1488.
The efficient management of renewables to reduce utilisation of energy sources with high impact on the environment (e.g. fossil fuels) is a widely studied research topic. The core of the complexity for this kind of planning and operational problems is the variety and variation on both the supply and demand side. In a typical case study both high and low temperature heat, and electricity demands are present and they vary through the time. This study applies mathematical programming for the rescheduling of the operations in order to minimise the utility consumption. It reduces the impact on the environment by exploiting an inherent flexibility of the processes on the demand side. Some operations can be shifted in time if the site has enough of a certain resource in stock. An example is the milling of wheat at a storehouse (production of flour) or the washing of laundry at a hotel (clean towels). A flexible operation can be rescheduled; however, the size of the stock implies a limitation for the shifting in time. The optimal solution of the operational level can depend on the design parameters. A retrofit sensitivity analysis has been done, where the optimal schedule was identified for different design conditions.
