MULTIVARIABLE PREDICTIVE CONTROL OF A THERMAL POWER PLANT

This work presents some preliminary results of a project aimed at the application of industrial Model Predictive Control (MPC) to thermal Power Plants. The rationale which motivates this research is the need to improve the efficiency of power plants to cope with the high levels of competitions induced by the liberalization of the energy market. A detailed plant simulator is coupled to an industrial MPC package implementing the Dynamic matrix Control (DMC) MPC algorithm. The reported simulation results witness the potentialities of MPC applied to power plants.