혼합정수계획법을 이용한 천연가스(LNG) 산업의 자가발전소 건설에 대한 경제성 분석

Economics of Self-Generation by Natural Gas Industry Using the Mixed Integer Program

Seasonal variation of natural gas demand coupled with rigid and stable import pattern of gas represents the characteristic feature of the Korean Liquified Natural Gas(LNG) industry. This attribute has required a huge amount of investment for the construction of storage facility. Thus, to minimize the supply cost, it is legitimate to reduce storage requirement itself. In this study, we combine three alternative methods to deal with the storage requirement to minimize the supply cost. Those are (1) adding additional storage tanks, (2) inducing large firm customers, and (3) constructing gas-turbine self generation facilities. Methodologically, we employ the mixed integer program (MIP) to optimize the system. The model also consider demand and price-setting scheme in separate modules. From the results, it is shown that if alternatives are combined optimally, a number of storage tanks can be reduced substantially compared with the original capacity plan set by the industry authorities. We perform various sensitivity analyses to check the robustness of the results. The methodology presented in this study can be applied to the other physical network industry, such as hydraulics. The empirical results will shed some light on the rationalization of capacity planning of the Korean natural gas industry.