A Comparison of Small-Scale Gas Turbine Control Schemes

Abstract

Throughout the world there is pressure to increase distributed energy generation. Driving factors include for example political and environmental concerns in developed countries and reliability in places where centralized grid does not either exist or is too unreliable. The energy generation based on renewable fuels such as biogas is also usually decentralized. To answer this demand, the number of small-scale gas turbine combined heat and power (CHP) installations have increased. Due to its nature, the required power output of distributed generation is highly variable. The power output of decentralized power plant needs to follow the local consumption power need and thus it needs to be efficiently controlled. Therefore, the requirement for variable output necessitates that small-scale gas turbines are often run at part-loads. Previously, most of the installed small-scale gas turbines have been single-spool units with either fixed or variable speed shafts. Control schemes and part-load performance are somewhat different for the two setups. Recently, a two-spool gas turbine where the spools can be controlled independently has been proposed as a feasible alternative. The possibility to produce the desired power output with two spools, both having their own generator, which can be controlled independently of each other, offers significantly more possibilities for the control. Therefore, it might also offer better part-load performance. In this paper, the control schemes of three different small-scale gas turbines are compared. Especially, the part-load electrical efficiency is studied. The studied gas turbines are: a single-spool fixed speed, a single-spool variable speed driven, and a two-spool variable speed driven gas turbine. The part-load performance of different machines is studied and then compared against each other. Furthermore, some estimations are given on how the part-load performance of each machine fares against certain load profiles.