ENHANCEMENT OF RELIABILITY AND ECONOMY OF A THERMAL POWER GENERATING SYSTEM THROUGH PREDICTION OF PLANT EFFICIENCY PARAMETERS

摘要

The plant 'Heat Rate' (HR) is a measure of overall efficiency of a thermal power generating system. It is dependent on a large number of factors, some of which are non-measurable, while data relating to others are seldom available and recorded. However, coal quality (expressed in terms of 'effective heat value' (EHV) as kcal / kg) transpires to be one of the important factors that influences HR values and data on EHV are available in any thermal power generating system. In the present work a prediction interval of the HR values have been proposed on the basis of only EHV, keeping in mind that coal quality is one of the important (but not the only) factors that have pronounced effect on the combustion process and hence on HR. The underlying theory borrows the idea of providing simultaneous confidence interval to the coefficients of an AR (p) process. The theory has been substantiated with the help of a real life data from a power utility (after suitable base and scale transformation of the data to maintain the confidentiality of the classified document). Scopes for formulating strategies to enhance the economy of a thermal power generating system have also been explored.