Cogeneration systems for industrial sector: An optimal power

Today's industrial sector depends more and more upon cogeneration systems due to their global efficiency and reduced pollution. These systems may operate from conventional fuel sources as well as from renewable energy sources (biomass, solar, fuel cell). Cogeneration is installed as a distributed generation and on-site generation source to profit from the produced heat. The utility can motivate factories to install such systems by permitting them to link their residual production capacity to the electrical grid. This work presents a study concerning the optimized cogeneration capacity to be installed in a factory. Genetic algorithm (GA) optimization method is then used with a sensitivity analysis to find a compromise between the economic and the environmental issues.