In designing energy supply systems, designers should consider that energy demands and costs as parameters have some uncertainties, evaluate the robustness in system performances against the uncertainties, and design the systems rationally to heighten the robustness. A robust optimal design method of energy supply systems under only uncertain energy demands was revised so that it can be applied to systems with complex configurations and large numbers of periods for variations in energy demands. In addition, a method of comparing performances of two energy supply systems under only uncertain energy demands was proposed by utilizing a part of the revised robust optimal design method. In this paper, the revised robust optimal design method as well as the proposed performance comparison method are extended so that they can be applied to the robust optimal design and the performance comparison of energy supply systems under not only uncertain energy demands but also uncertain energy costs. Through a case study on a gas turbine cogeneration system for district energy supply, the validity and effectiveness of the extended optimal design method and features of the robust optimal design are clarified. In addition, the gas turbine cogeneration system is compared with a conventional energy supply system using the extended performance comparison method.
Robust Optimal Design of Energy Supply Systems Based on Minimax Regret Criterion.
