IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orinte/v21y1991i1p27-41.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using an Optimization Software to Lower Overall Electric Production Costs for Southern Company

Author

Listed:
  • S. R. Erwin

    (Southern Company Services, Inc., PO Box 2635, Birmingham, Alabama 35202, USA)

  • J. S. Griffith

    (Southern Company Services, Inc., PO Box 2635, Birmingham, Alabama 35202, USA)

  • J. T. Wood

    (Southern Company Services, Inc., PO Box 2635, Birmingham, Alabama 35202, USA)

  • K. D. Le

    (ABB Power Systems, Inc., 777 Penn Center Boulevard, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15235, USA)

  • J. T. Day

    (ABB Power Systems, Inc., 777 Penn Center Boulevard, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15235, USA)

  • C. K. Yin

    (ABB Power Systems, Inc., 777 Penn Center Boulevard, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15235, USA)

Abstract

The electric utility business has traditionally been very capital-intensive. In the last 10 years, however, fuel costs have escalated at a faster rate than all other cost components. To minimize its fuel cost expenditures, Southern Company installed a comprehensive operational-planning software package to forecast system loads, optimally schedule thermal and hydro units, and estimate future prices of power transactions. The heart of the package is the Wescouger optimization program, designed by the Advanced System Technology division of ABB Power Systems, Inc. By using state-of-the-art dynamic programming and branch-and-bound techniques, Wescouger has helped Southern Company save over $140 million in fuel costs over the past seven years. Today, this optimization software is one of the key scheduling tools used at the control center in Birmingham to fulfill the pool's most important responsibility—to deliver electricity to customers in the most reliable and least costly manner.

Suggested Citation

  • S. R. Erwin & J. S. Griffith & J. T. Wood & K. D. Le & J. T. Day & C. K. Yin, 1991. "Using an Optimization Software to Lower Overall Electric Production Costs for Southern Company," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 27-41, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:21:y:1991:i:1:p:27-41
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.21.1.27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.21.1.27
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/inte.21.1.27?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter C. Bell & Chris K. Anderson & Stephen P. Kaiser, 2003. "Strategic Operations Research and the Edelman Prize Finalist Applications 1989--1998," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 51(1), pages 17-31, February.
    2. Peter C. Bell & Chris K. Anderson, 2002. "In Search of Strategic Operations Research/Management Science," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 32(2), pages 28-40, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:21:y:1991:i:1:p:27-41. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.