Helping thermal power plants operate ‘closer to the edge’ – Profitability in a dynamic load environment

They say that trends blow from the West to the East. That blowing trend is wind (and solar) power.

While each region’s energy mix is different, traditional power plants using coal and natural gas are greatly affected by the movement toward renewable energy generation. As a result of the inherent intermittence of renewable energy, these thermal power generation plants are having a major about face in terms of their operations strategy.

Plants that were often rewarded for operating above full load are now tasked with adjusting their megawatt outputs every 15 minutes or less. A plant may need to adjust output as low as possible to avoid selling MW at a loss when renewables generation is high, while just as quickly increasing output to meet demand when the wind stops blowing, or when families come home from a hard day’s work. These plants are probably, insufficiently compensated for their contribution to grid stability.

Regardless, coal and natural gas power plants are testing the lower limits of their output. Operating ‘closer to the edge’ increases the risk of damaging equipment or tripping offline. Plants that can prove their ability to do so, in a safe and stable manner, have a better chance of profitability in this new era of energy generation.

A focus on improved operations training and enhanced engineering evaluations, coupled with a true high-fidelity simulator, helps ensure that your plant and your operators are up to the task.

Operations Training

Coal and natural gas plant operators have been trained their whole careers to start up their plant and run it at full capacity until there is a maintenance or forced outage. Often times, an operator may not even see the procedure of starting a unit from start to finish in his or her career.  Cycling the megawatt output multiple times per day is often not what the plant was designed for and increases the risk of damaging plant equipment or tripping offline.

The prevalence of risk is compounded by the fact that so many experienced operators have recently retired.  Now these plants have less experienced operators doing more ‘closer to the edge’ operations, more frequently.

Use true, high-fidelity simulator to train and let your plant staff practice ‘closer to the edge’ operations.  Without high-fidelity, there is no real way to determine if you are getting accurate enough results to implement operational practice and procedures on the real plant.  It’s a numbers game, and not having true high-fidelity just doesn’t add up.  A high-fidelity simulator will allow your plants to:

• Develop new or fine tune your operating procedures
• Give operators confidence in fast start, fast ramp, and low load operations
• Prepare operators to recognize and react correctly to alarms and equipment issues
• Keep the plant operating safely, the most important condition of them all

Engineering Evaluations

Conventional power plants were built to run at a single base-loaded capacity, often times at full nameplate generation. The upgraded control systems that will allow these plants to complete load changes and operate at a lower generating capacity are expensive investments and the cold hard truth is that utilities aren’t likely to invest in fixing major issues at traditional power plants.

Give your plant the chance it needs to operate efficiently and to succeed with a true high-fidelity simulator:

• Test process control strategies
  • Make sure that your new control system is using automation as best as it can.
• Test new operating procedures for dynamic operations
• Validate new controls logics in a Virtual DCS to replicate in the plant DCS
• Virtually commission a new process loop or unit operation being added to the plant

Conclusion

Renewable energy is an increasingly larger part of the energy mix. Conventional power plants utilizing coal and natural gas need to seize every opportunity to be profitable in this new energy era.

A true, high-fidelity simulator can give these thermal plants a leg up on the competition, enabling them to operate ‘closer to the edge’ safely.

Contact us to learn more about how GSE’s true, high-fidelity simulators have helped traditional power plants with operations training and engineering evaluations for their ‘closer to the edge’ operations.