Decomposition methods for operations scheduling problem in a combined heat and power plant

This paper provides an overview of methods applicable to the operations scheduling of components in a combined heat and power (CHP) plant. This task deals with determining an economically efficient schedule for individual components building up the thermodynamic cycle of the CHP plant with respect to heat demand, cost of fuel and allowances, electricity price etc. The attention is focused on decomposition methods allowing utilization of further knowledge about the structure of the scheduling problem formulated as a mixed-integer linear program. These techniques are surveyed with an aim to reduce computational demands of the task as state-of-the-art general-purpose solvers are often unable to handle real-world instances of the problem. Concepts of applying the methods to the target problem are also proposed.