Yearly hour-by-hour performance evaluation of a SIEMENSE gas turbine power plant for Australia’s climate condition with and without a novel intake air pre-cooling strategy

Abstract

The power production, fuel consumption and revenue of any gas turbine (GT) power plant are greatly affected by variations in ambient conditions (entering air into the compressor). This paper simulates and reports the power output and efficiency of a gas turbine-based power plant (SGT-750 SIEMENSE) using around 8000 h-by-hour yearly weather data of two regions of Australia (north and south) without pre-cooling, with sole M−cycle pre-cooling and finally with an innovative hybrid pre-cooler. The hybrid pre-cooler consists of a Maisotsenko indirect evaporative cooler (M−cycle) and an absorption chiller (ABC). Briefly, the results indicate that power raise of the GT plant using the M−cycle IEC alone is about 2 % in temperate regions and 4 % in hot regions, while it would be about 4 % and 6 % respectively if the hybrid pre-cooler is used. Reducing the inlet air temperature by 8–10 °C increases the generated power of a GT with pre-cooler by 8–9 %.