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Power Generators continue to find themselves needing to pace with decarbonization while meeting the growing market demand. One way to best solve both challenges is to drive efficiency of plant operations. Operations Performance Management solutions can help power generators ensure that their plant is operating at expected performance.
Heat rate is the power industry standard for quantifying the fuel efficiency of the overall power system expressed in units of fuel per unit mw generated. Heat rate is the inverse of efficiency.
Take for example, a combined cycle power plant with a gross efficiency of 60% that has a gross heat rate of 5,700 btu/kwh. In this case, assuming the same quantity of mw generation, a 1% reduction in heat rate equates to a 1% reduction in emissions. Fundamentally, the amount of raw fuel input and combustion byproduct output (CO2, CO, NOx…) are related. Regulators often quantify the amount of (CO2) emissions from energy production (and generation emissions costs) by using production fuel quantities as a direct proxy.
Plant operators need to focus on safe and reliable generation meeting their dispatch commitments, equipment degradation performance recovery is difficult and expensive to identify and quantify. Heat rate is a moving target changing with load, operating mode, environment, process and equipment condition. Heat rate is not a direct measurement. Heat rate is a business and environmental initiative.
Combined cycle power systems utilize a complex set of equipment including fuel systems, turbines, heat exchangers, pumps, etc. All of the associated equipment is used to achieve the power system's overall power generation targets at the best achievable heat rate based on the plant and equipment design. Any changes or degradation in the equipment-level performance has an associated impact on the overall plant heat rate. For example, if a heat exchanger becomes blocked/clogged or has fouling on the tubes, its heat transfer efficiency goes down, and in turn the overall system efficiency goes down with a resulting increase in the overall plant fuel consumption required for the same quantity of MW output generation.
Plants operate across a wide range of operating loads and a variety of equipment configurations to achieve the desired load or dispatch targets. Each of these loads and operating modes has an associated heat rate entitlement.
Measuring, monitoring, diagnosing and quantifying heat rate performance at the overall plant level and across the plant system of equipment is a challenging and expensive task for power generation operators. For many, a dedicated staff of thermal performance engineers are tasked with pouring through reams of sensor data, and distilling it down into meaningful insights regarding the equipment performance and business priorities for O&M/outage planning. Power generation operators also use performance monitoring software to aid plant support personnel and management teams to improve effectiveness and productivity in heat rate monitoring and management.
Operations performance management software, such as GE Digital's OPM software application, helps power generators optimize operational performance. Specifically, OPM can help:
In addition, Operations Performance Management can help power generators increase revenue and margins with visibility and insight such as:
Using power system engineering expertise and advanced analytics, Operations Performance Management drives operational and thermal performance improvement, helping power generators reduce their CO2 footprint while enhancing revenues and meeting today's power demands.
Looking for more insights on how you can drive further plant operational efficiency? Look at GE Digital's Operational Performance Management solutions for Power Generation.
Operations Performance Management (OPM) improves the performance of plants, sites, and generation portfolios with Performance Intelligence, Production Planning and Performance Optimization.
Enabled by secure edge-to-cloud technology and built on the Predix Platform, OPM analyzes historical data, plant operations and other data sources to monitor and diagnose issues or areas of improvement, predict capacity and its cost to improve day ahead and intraday planning, deliver executable advice or close the loop and drive desired outcomes for improved efficiency, flexibility, capacity and emissions.
The global energy landscape will change more in the next 10 years than in the previous hundred. As the world’s energy sector moves away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources, industrial companies are challenged with addressing this transition in transformative ways.
Digitization will be key to making power-generating assets more efficient, the electric grid more secure and resilient, the aviation industry more sustainable, and helping manufacturers reduce waste.