OPTIMAL
Optimise your energy assets
Generating and managing the power and heat you need to run your operations is becoming more and more complex.
As regulations evolve and your operations grow, so does the increasingly diverse range of assets and energy sources you need to own, manage and operate dynamically to be as cost and environmentally efficient as possible.
Utilising these assets enables you to introduce renewable energy, efficient power and heating and energy storage systems (at both local and national level) into your operation. It also allows you to maximise revenue generated through green incentives and to build operational resilience through hedging energy costs and revenues. However, this increasing diversity in assets drives up complexity. The management of complex energy systems leads to increased overheads and uncertainty around whether your operations are as efficient as possible.
Operating multiple assets dynamically requires intelligent optimisation.
This is where Ricardo’s Optimal can help.
Optimal is a digital platform that provides you with a running plan for your assets and energy source systems based on your forecast demand, allowing you to dynamically optimise your operations.
The tool is configured for your specific system and business objectives (cost, revenue, environmental impact), and will intelligently provide you with the most efficient way of managing your assets based on your forecasted demand.
Optimal has been developed in partnership with world-leading renewable infrastructure and energy asset management organisations with applications across industry.
Key features
Configure Optimal so that it accurately represents the assets that you have in your system and their operating characteristics.
Choose an optimised solution for a variety of performance objectives based on your business priorities, e.g. minimum next cost, maximum revenue, target CO2.
Optimise at a granular level, to ensure that you make the most of highly dynamic changes to your pricing conditions.
We can provide you with support to translate your existing asset operation into the inputs that you require to use Optimal.
Specify your exact forecast heat, CO2 and electricity demand in 30-minute intervals and generate specific run plans for each of your assets.
Plan your operations with up to seven-day look ahead so that you can proactive help your operational team manage your assets.
Web-hosted, intuitive UI helps you to keep training requirements for operational staff to a minimum. Log-in and go!
Rerun your planning optimisation scenarios as frequently as you need to stay ahead of the changes to demand.
Optimal Data Science Model
Optimal is underpinned by a cutting-edge data science optimisation model built by the experts at Ricardo.
This allows you to bring together your plant asset availability, operating demand data and price trends to generate run plans for your assets at half hourly intervals for the next seven days.
The tool is designed to be self-service by your operational team and is accessible via an intuitive user interface directly through your web browser.
Use cases
Renewable heat incentives
Using Optimal, you can identify how to make the most of support from schemes such as the Non-Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive, by optimising the heat produced by eligible assets, with electricity generated either on-site or sourced from the national grid.
Power to grid electricity exporting
Using Optimal, you can make decisions regarding when to use electricity on site and when to export, based on dynamic changes to pricing. This allows you to balance your supply and demand in the most cost-effective manner.
Targeted CO2 enrichment levels
Using Optimal, you can elevate your sustainability credentials by setting the exact amount of CO2 you need to produce to adequately enrich your growing environment.