Abstract
This chapter presents the recent research on the various strategies for power plant flexible operations to meet the requirement of load balance. The aim of this study is to investigate whether it is feasible to integrate the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) with the thermal power plant steam-water cycle. Optional thermal charge and discharge locations in the cycle have been proposed and compared. Dynamic modelling and simulations have been carried out to demonstrate the capability of TES integration in supporting the flexible operation of the power plant. The simulation software named SimuEngine is adopted and a 600 MW supercritical coal-fired power plant model is implemented onto the software platform. Three TES charging strategies and two TES discharging strategies are proposed and verified via the simulation platform. The simulation results show that it is feasible to extract steam from steam turbines to charge the TES and to discharge the stored thermal energy back to the power generation processes. The improved capability of the plant flexible operation is further studied in supporting the responses to the grid load demand changes. The results demonstrated that the TES integration has led to much faster and more flexible responses to the load demand changes.
Highlights
The current balance between power generation and load demand is mainly managed by regulating the output of fossil fuel power plants [1, 2]
Approximately 39% of global electricity is generated from hard coal, which produces a large amount of ash, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide
The supercritical boiler was first developed in the US in the 1950s [3], which was a type of technology with improved efficiency and reduced carbon dioxide and toxic emissions per unit of electrical energy generation
Summary
The current balance between power generation and load demand is mainly managed by regulating the output of fossil fuel power plants [1, 2]. Fossil fuel power plants are required to work more flexible and to respond faster with more frequent start-ups or shutdowns for maintaining power network stability; this can cause two serious issues: low plant efficiency and low load factors. To address these issues, it is essential to explore new technologies and operation strategies. Because the thermal inertia of a once-through boiler is smaller than a natural circulation boiler, the capability of offering primary frequency reserve is decreased This motivates the utilization of TES in supercritical coal-fired power plants, as the TES could provide the additional thermal reserve.
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