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What is heat rate? Why is it so important? These are very important questions with critical answers that everyone that manages, operates, or
maintains a combined cycle power plant should know.
In this article, we are going to find out what heat rate is. We will discuss the various components at the plant and how they affect heat rate. Most
importantly, we will find out how each and every one of you can help improve your plants heat rate and how this can save the plant a
considerable amount of money. This article describes heat rate and heat rate deviation. It also calculates the impact of heat rate deviation.
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1 What is Heat Rate?
1.1 Plant Heat Rate
1.2 Conversion Factors for Standard Cubic Foot to Pounds Mass
1.3 Why is Heat Rate Important?
1.4 Heat Rate Deviation
1.5 Cost of Heat Rate Deviations
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Efficiency is "a ratio of the useful energy output by the system to the energy input to the system." Mathematically:
As you can see, heat rate is simply the inverse of efficiency. With that in mind, if you increase plant efficiency, which is good, then you would
lower heat rate. What this means is that the lower the heat rate, the better your plant is running and, therefore, the more competitive it is.
As you can see by the equations, efficiency has no units, but heat rate does. That is because with heat rate, you typically are measuring the
chemical energy input and the electrical energy output, and this will leave you with the units of BTU/kWh.
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Unit analysis is very important. At many sites, fuel flow is measured in lbm/hr, and HHV is given in scf/hr. It is very important to make sure that
you match units when doing these problems. At some sites, there is a chromatograph that will measure the heat content of the fuel, and your
DCS will convert the fuel flow and HHV to MMBTU. It is very important you make sure you are using the correct units in your equations.
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As you will notice, there is a 4.1% difference between gross heat rate and net heat rate. This shows you the importance of maintaining site
loads at a minimum. That will increase your net plant output and, thus, lower your heat rate.
An important point to make here is that the percentage the plant is loaded has a factor on heat rate. The closer the plant is to base load, the
better the heat rate. This is due to many factors. The gas turbine is tuned to operate more efficiently at base load. Additionally, the steam
turbine will be more efficient at base load. Also, you normally still have the same house loads at minimum load as you do at base load, or they
are not proportionally lowered.
It is very important that your site marketing team understands this and understands the consequences financially of dispatching the units in less
than full load configuration.
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this to one year of operation so it can be seen what this cost is per year. This will give you the dramatic look at what savings and losses can be
had with minor deviations.
Annual Fuel Cost = Heat Rate Deviation (HRD) x Fuel Cost (FC) x Capacity Factor (CF) x [Gross Capacity (GC) Auxiliary Loads (AL)] x Time
(Number of Hours in a Year)
Since we will be calculating for what one unit of heat rate costs, we will substitute 1 BTU/kWhr for our heat rate deviation.
Gas Turbine Combined Cycle Calculation
Other assumptions:
This is the annual cost for one unit of heat rate deviation. With that said, if you do just a 0.5% increase in deviation on a plant that has a heat
rate of 7,400, this will be a 37-unit heat rate improvement, which calculates to an annual fuel savings of $349,267.05. This number usually gets
the attention of most of the people at the plant.
You will be able to use this equation when calculating savings for your plant on various projects.
As an example, a project was conducted on a combined cycle facility where several drain valves on the HRSG were leaking during operation. It
was determined that this was causing a loss in heat rate due to the loss in steam. The project was to replace the drain valves with better-quality
metal-seated ball valves. This project cost was $15,000 per unit. Since the owners were unsure that there would be a cost benefit seen, they
would only allow one unit to be done. Once the results on the heat rate improvement were documented, they would decide if it was costeffective to do the other unit. Once the valves were replaced on the unit, the heat rate on the unit was improved by 11 Btu/kWhr. The cost for
one Btu/kWhr was $8,321. This showed an annual fuel savings of $91,531. The payback on this project was less than two months. With this
ammunition in the bag, a presentation was made to the owner, and the other unit had the project completed during the next outage.
Making a presentation to any level of management goes a long way when the cost savings can be seen.
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