Patent Document ID: 20090319092
Application ID: 12547558
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A system for optimizing operation of a plurality of power generating units, each of said plurality of power generating units comprised of a plurality of components, the system comprising: at least one component optimization system associated with each of said plurality of power generating units; and a multi-unit optimization system for determining optimal values of said one or more goals and said constraints for operation of each of the at least one component optimization system associated with each of said plurality of power generating units, wherein the multi-unit optimization system includes: a multi-unit model for each of said components, each said multi-unit model receiving input values associated with manipulated variables and disturbance variables and predicting an output value for at least one controlled variable associated with operation of said component, and a multi-unit optimizer for determining optimal setpoint values for at least one of manipulated variables and controlled variables associated with control of the component, said optimal setpoint values determined in accordance with one or more goals associated with operation of the power generating unit and constraints associated with operation of the power generating unit, wherein said optimal setpoint values determined by the multi-unit optimizer for at least one of manipulated variables and controlled variables, are used to determine said one or more goals and said constraints for each of the at least one component optimization system associated with each of said plurality of power generating units.