Research On The Optimization Of Coal Inventory Of Power Plants

Energy is an indispensable necessities in our daily life, power generation companies must ensure that power is normal, stable, continuous supply in the production and management, and electricity can not be stored. If the fuel supply is interrupted in normal power generation, it will result in significant direct and indirect economic losses, even an adverse impact on society. To this end, the plant must be buffered and adjust inventory levels through reasonable control of the fuel.In last decade, with the dramatic economic growth in China, the domestic power plants have put great efforts to maintain the supply of energy facing consistently increasing power demand. Since the supply of coal from a planned economy into an independent, self-financing market competition, competition among power companies increasingly fierce, and with the strong development of power construction, competition for limited resources, especially coal resource development will be more intense. Thus, with the changes in the coal supply situation, market demand and supply of coal became very nervous.More recently, the power plants have been struggled to sustain a certain level of electricity delivery because of increasing cost and tighten supply of coal, which could be a serious threat to domestic economy.Most power stations in the world burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas to generate electricity and purchasing these natural resources takes up a very large share of total cost of these powerhouses. Maintaining enough amount of inventory is one of the most important elements to successful operate a power plant, but meanwhile, the inventory cost could be a great burden to the company itself. Therefore, optimizing inventory is the key for cost control.Based on the inventory theory, this paper analyzed the prevalence of inventory management problem in power generation companies, the need for inventory optimization, the structure of inventory cost and impact factors, we provided a solution which could optimize the production/inventory system of the power industry.Then combined coal demand planning models and coal inventory cost minimization model to optimize inventory, aimed at ensuring the normal operation of the plant.In the end, this paper applied genetic algorithm on the empirical data of Dou He power station and examine the feasibility of the theoretic model.