Optimal Mine-Production Strategies that Minimize Global Adjustment Charges

Goldcorp在安大略运营的矿山综合体（地下矿山和地上工厂）消耗大量电力。如果电力在整个省的前五个总的“日历”需求小时中的任何一个上使用，那么大型工业消费者的电力账单将高成本归因于年消耗[17，19]。Goldcorp希望避免在五个不同的日子的最高需求小时，这五个高峰是财政年度最高的。矿场只需在足够长的时间内降低负荷，以确保避开高峰需求时间。闲置矿井和从线路电力切换到昂贵的柴油发电会导致重大生产中断。该网站需要大约六个小时的减少负荷，以避免一个小时的高峰事件。这种关闭做法也暂停了所有的黄金生产。如果能提前知道下一年全省的用电量，那么Goldcorp的问题就很容易解决了，只要找出用电量最高的日历时间，然后在每个时间里，通过决定闲置多少电量、闲置哪些电量以及用现场柴油发电替代哪些电量，来确定避免高电费的最佳方式。然而，全省的用电量高峰时间并不能提前一年知道，尽管可以使用公开的天气预报和给定时间的负荷与温度之间的历史关系[6]来进行省负荷预测（其提前2-3天相当准确），但是空转操作涉及重大的机会损失和额外的成本。矿井人员希望将采用此电源管理策略停止矿井生产的预期天数降至最低。然而，与此同时，现场希望在前五个高峰时段的任何时候都强烈劝阻作业。为了最佳地进行这种权衡，评估的初始部分将量化前五天的运行成本与一天的空转成本，并重点量化和适当调整停机阈值。Goldcorp将通过额外生产增加约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.