Evolutionary algorithms to determine the configuration of minimum cost of systems for co-generation of energy based on natural gas

This work presents a special case of the general problem of determining the configuration of cogeneration systems in which the primary source of energy is natural gas. The objective is to determine the configuration with the minimum cost. Technical, operational and economic features impose constraints to the problem making it computationally hard to solve. Evolutionary algorithms based upon genetic, memetic and transgenetic algorithms are presented to solve the problem. A computational experiment with thirty-five instances generated in accordance with five distinct cogeneration cycles is reported. The results show that the transgenetic algorithm exhibits an overall best performance.