Across organizations, decision-making should be about seeking to improve performance. Four key areas are being improved: data, situational awareness, analytics, foresight. New technology is advancing and interconnecting these areas for faster decisions with reduced uncertainty.
To decide 'What should I do now that's best for me over this financial period?' requires accurate decisions and clear implementable actions. Digitalization of data, analytics and workflows are compressing the time required to make these decisions. Visual MESA® Multi-Period Optimizer is a high-fidelity analytics technology that brings together data, first principles digital twins and multi-period constraints in a purpose-built mixed integer optimization to continually ensure that the right decisions are made about which generation assets to start up, shut down and where to deploy energy at lowest economic cost.
Real-time optimization of energy systems has proven fairly effective to date, typically saving 2–5% of site energy costs. By adding an upper decision layer where the time-sensitive variables are optimally defined, a real time reactive optimizer can be transformed into a proactive look-ahead optimization. This allows scheduling engineers and operators to achieve optimal operation of energy systems over various time horizons when dealing with multiple time-dependent constraints enhancing the benefits.
However achieving beneficial performance not only requires speed of solution, situational awareness, knowing the constraints and reducing the assumptions; it needs reduced implementation time through improved workflows, clear actions and closed loop. Only then can a better decision be delivered faster.