Methods and apparatus for operating production facilities

A software code segment for controlling a computer to continuously determine, without perceived delay, an incremental cost of operating a plurality of production facilities based on a first resource input to each respective facility and a second resource utilization of the first resource at each respective facility, said incremental cost based on a level of production of each said respective facility, said segment including:

• a fuel tracking module programmed for continually tracking, without perceived delay, at least one of fuel cost, fuel flow, and fuel quality for each respective facility;
• a process component tracking module for modeling facility components to continuously generate, without perceived delay, heat rate curves for each respective facility;
• and
• a dispatch decision module programmed to receive inputs from at least one of said fuel tracking module, said process component tracking module, and said dispatch decision module configured to continuously generate, without perceived delay, system dispatch cost curves.