Energy production in power plants comes with both high costs and turnover whereas variations in the production strategy—that is, which boilers, coolers, or generators that should be running—have big impact on the economic result. This is especially true for a combined heat and power (CHP) plant where the production of district heating and electricity is linked, thus allowing for a higher flexibility in the production strategy and potential of increasing the revenue.

Previous research states that thermo-economic optimization can have a great impact on economic result of power plants, but every power plant is operating under a unique set of conditions depending on its location, operating market, load demand, construction, surrounding, and the like, and comparable studies on CHP plants in Sweden are very few. This study aims to fill this research gap by evaluating savings potential of a CHP plant in Lidköping, Sweden by utilizing thermo-economic optimization with the approach of combining actual historical data from the power plant with mass-flow equations and constraints to construct a mathematical MODEST model that is optimized by linear programming.

The result demonstrates a clear theoretical potential to improve earnings and the conclusion that the studied CHP would benefit by implementing optimization procedures or software to schedule production. The result was also comparable to previous research but varied over time, which highlights how unique conditions may impact the result.