Proceedings of the Second International Energy 2030 Conference,
November 4-5, 2008, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Multi-Objective Robust Optimization of Energy Systems

W. Hu
University of Maryland, USA

N. Al-Qasas
The Petroleum Institute, UAE

M. Li
University of Maryland, USA

S. Al Hashimi
The Petroleum Institute, UAE

S. Azarm
University of Maryland, USA

Abstract
Optimization problems in energy systems often involve multiple conflicting design objectives subject to multiple constraints and uncertainty in input parameters. One approach for solving such problems is to use Multi-Objective Robust Optimization (MORO). The goal in MORO is to obtain system solutions that are as best as possible in a multi-objective sense and at the same time their system performance is “insensitive” to uncertainty. In this paper, a new MORO approach is presented. We use both this new MORO technique and also a previously developed MORO technique to solve a distillation column problem. For this problem, it is found that the solutions obtained from these two MORO approaches are in agreement. More importantly, it is shown that the number of simulation calls required by the new MORO approach is an order-of-magnitude less than the previous MORO technique.