Optimizing sustainable biomass–coal co-firing power plant location problem under ambiguous supply

Abstract

Promoting biomass–coal co-firing power generation technology in existing coal-fired power plants is a practical and relatively low-cost short-run choice for the coal-fired power industry to reduce carbon emissions and develop sustainably. However, the uncertainty of biomass supply complicates the location of co-firing power plants among existing coal-fired plants. To address the challenge that only limited historical data of uncertain supply are available, this paper proposes a new ambiguity distribution set to characterize the uncertain supply capacity, supply price, and supply quality (i.e., energy conversion coefficient). Accordingly, a novel bi-objective distributionally robust fuzzy optimization model is developed for the sustainable co-firing power plant location (SCPPL) problem to balance conflicting objectives of minimizing total cost and maximizing carbon emission reduction. Subsequently, the computationally tractable counterpart of the proposed model is derived against the worst-case distribution by reformulating the distributionally robust credibility objective and constraints as their solvable equivalent forms. Furthermore, the Pareto optimal solutions of the proposed bi-objective model are generated using the augmented ϵ-constraint method. Finally, a realistic case study of Heilongjiang Province in China is conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed optimization method. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model can hedge against the distributional ambiguity of uncertain parameters and provides a robust co-firing power plant location strategy. By comparison with the nominal distribution model and analysis of the sensitivity of selected parameters, management insights are summarized for decision-makers.