Optimal Mine-Production Strategies that Minimize Global Adjustment Charges

Goldcorp在安大略省运营的矿山综合体（地下矿山和地上矿山）消耗大量电力。对于大型工业用户来说，如果电力是在全省五大总“日历”需求时段中的任何一个时段使用，则其年消耗成本很高[17,19]。黄金公司希望避开5天的需求高峰时段，因为这5天的需求高峰是本财年最高的。站点只需要减少足够长的负荷，以确保避免高峰需求时间。矿井的空转和从线路供电转向昂贵的柴油发电会造成重大的生产中断。该站点需要大约6小时的减少负载以避免1小时的高峰事件。这种关闭做法也暂停了所有黄金生产。如果能提前知道明年全省的负荷，Goldcorp的问题就很容易解决了，只要找到日历上的最高消耗小时数，然后针对每一个小时，通过决定闲置多少、闲置哪些以及用现场柴油发电取代哪些，确定避免高电费的最佳方式。然而，各省的高峰负荷时间并不能提前一整年知道，尽管各省的负荷预测可以利用公开的天气预报和给定时间b[6]的负荷和温度之间的历史关系提前2-3天相当准确。空转作业会导致大量的机会损失和额外的成本。矿井工作人员希望最小化这种电力管理策略用于停止矿井生产的预期天数。然而，与此同时，该网站希望强烈劝阻在前五个高峰时段的任何时间进行操作。为了实现这种最佳权衡，评估的初始部分将量化前五天运行的成本与一天空转的成本，并重点量化和适当调整关闭阈值。通过增加产量，Goldcorp将增加约180万加元的收入，并避免每年高达600万加元的“全球调整”电力成本。

The mine complexes (underground mine and above ground mill) Goldcorp operates in Ontario draw largeamounts of power. Power billing for large industrial consumers ascribes a high cost to annual consumption ifelectricity is used on any of the top five overall 'calendar' demand hours for the entire province [17,19].Goldcorp wants to avoid the top demand hour on five different days where these five peaks are the highest forthe fiscal year. The site need only reduce the load long enough to ensure the peak demand hour is avoided.Idling the mine and switching from line power to expensive diesel generation causes major productiondisruptions. The site requires about six hours of reduced load to avoid the one-hour peak event. Thisshut-down practice also suspends all gold production. If the provincial load for the entire next year wereknown in advance, Goldcorp's problem would be easily solved by finding the top consumption calendar hoursand, for each of these hours, determine the optimal way to avoid high electricity costs by deciding how much toidle, what to idle, and what to replace with on-site diesel generation.However, the provincial peak-load hour is not known a whole year in advance, although provincial loadpredictions, which are fairly accurate up to 2-3 days in advance, can be made using publicly available weatherforecasts and the historical relationship between load and temperature at given hours [6].Idling the operation involves major lost opportunity and additional costs. Mine personnel want to minimize theexpected number of days that this power-management strategy is employed for ceasing mine production.Simultaneously, however, the site wants to strongly dissuade operation at any time during the top five peakhours. To make this trade-off optimally, the initial part of the evaluation will be to quantify the cost of runningin a top-five day against the cost of idling for a day and a focus on quantifying and appropriately adjusting theshut-down threshold. Goldcorp stands to improve revenue by approximately $1.8 M CAD through additionalproduction and avoid high annual "Global Adjustment" power costs in the order of $ 6 M CAD.