Case Study: Sasol maximizes operational capacity and boosts winter power output with AIMMS

Sasol Maximizes Operational Capacity with AIMMS

Sasol, an international energy and chemicals company operating world-scale facilities, opened a 175 MW gas-engine power plant in Sasolburg powered by 18 engines and looking to sell short-term excess capacity to the national grid. The plant’s engines require maintenance at specific intervals and starting all engines together caused service schedules to coincide, creating peak maintenance demand that outstripped the single core maintenance team and threatened plant availability.

Sasol’s Decision Support Group, with ORTEC and AIMMS, built a long-horizon optimization application to solve the large mixed-integer scheduling problem and provide a user-friendly interface for repeated runs. The optimized schedule raised winter electricity production by 4.6%, increased operational capacity and ability to meet demand, ensured adherence to service intervals, and made optimal use of the maintenance team, easing pressure on the national grid.

Sasol