Performance and degradation evaluation of a combined cycle power plant

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1302895 (Table of Contents)

The performance of the power plants became an important consideration for energy industry in recent years. Many factors such as the deregulation of the energy market, latest strict environmental rules, depletion of the fossil fuels, continuously increasing high fuel prices and growing energy demand increase pressure on authorities to further consider the power plant performance. Although there are many studies concerning thermodynamic cycles and theoretical performance of various combined cycle power plant configurations, publications about actual combined cycle power plant hardware performance and their observed degradation data remain rather limited in the open literature. This study presents a performance and degradation evaluation study of an actual combined cycle power plant. A case study has been carried out to analyze the performance degradation of the 1350 MW Ambarli Combined Cycle Power Plant which is in service more than 20 years. In order to conduct performance analyses a computer based model of the power plant has been developed complete with all subsystems currently in service. First, the plant performance has been modeled per design specs. Then the calculated design performance has been validated by commissioning test values of the power plant. After this model calibration and validation step, current operating performance of the plant has been calculated. Degradation analysis of the power plant has been carried out by comparing the design and current performance results. A sensitivity analysis has been performed to illustrate the components' and subsystems' contributions to the overall power plant performance. Possible rehabilitation scenarios for the power plant have been analyzed. Through sample analysis it has been demonstrated how the possible performance improvement alternatives can raise the overall performance of the power plant. Finally, cost-benefit analyses of various rehabilitation options have been performed to find out the most effective rehabilitation combinations.