Mathcom Customers: e-Acumen

Given changing demand for electricity, changing fuel costs, EPA constraints and many other factors, deciding when and how to run a power plant is a complex business.

Mathcom worked closely with e-Acumen energy experts to develop the requirements for a model of electrical power plant dispatching. The model involved fluctuating spot prices for electricity, changing fuel costs, operational constraints, changing plant characteristics, planned and unplanned outages, EPA constraints, and many other factors.

Mathcom designed a solution architecture. In a series of evolutionary steps we created a system that met all of the customer's requirements. The system optimized net revenue while satisfying all of the financial, legal and operational constraints.

One of the most difficult challenges was performance. Most optimization systems take minutes or hours to come to a solution. This system had to reach an accurate answer in less than a second. In fact the final system ran in well under a second, without sacrificing accuracy.