Price-based coordination of interconnected systems with access to external markets

Abstract

Many industrial processes are coupled via multiple networks of energy and materials to achieve a resource and energy efficient production. In many cases however, setting up an integrated optimization problem for all units or plants that are directly connected to the networks is not possible, especially when not all information can be shared. In such cases, dual decomposition or price-based coordination can be used, where optimal transfer prices are iteratively determined at which the networks are balanced and the resources are allocated optimally between the participants. In this contribution, price-based coordination is extended to include the situation where limited resources can be bought or sold at predefined prices from external markets (e.g. via pipelines) and the resulting algorithms are demonstrated for a realistic example.