Assessment of supercritical power plant performance: Final report. [Contains description of all US supercritical boilers]
This work discusses the performance of supercritical power plants in the US, particularly in relation to subcritical units so that better informed value-judgments can be made when considering the purchase of new power plants. Measures of performance include availability, maintainability, control, cyclic duty capability and heat rate. Data were obtained from a literature review, a special search of the NERC (North American Reliability Council) outage data base, a questionnaire to all owners/operators of supercritical units in the US and interviews with operational personnel of supercritical power plants and their utility general offices. The report summarizes these data and presents analyses of the key factors impacting performance. For completeness, a listing and brief technical description is presented of all US supercritical units in operation. It is concluded that present supercritical units in general do provide: (1) significant heat rate benefits amounting to 150 to 200 Btu/kWh compared to a subcritical unit, (2) outage rates comparable to a drum-unit after an initial learning period, (3) relatively small added maintenance costs primarily due to solid particle erosion of turbine blading and wear of steam-generator startup system valves. The majority of problems previously attributed to the manufacturer's design, to a change in operating conditions, plant misoperation, or are unrelated to supercritical pressure level. Significant objections to the supercritical cycle have been problems associated with the startup bypass system and its limited cyclic duty capability. New supercritical steam-generators are designed to overcome these difficulties and are already operating in Japan and Europe. 60 refs., 33 figs., 9 tabs.
- Research Organization:
- Ebasco Services, Inc., New York (USA); Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6979787
- Report Number(s):
- EPRI-CS-4968; ON: TI87920191
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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