Effect of cold-end system on plant operating costs

Operating costs of electricity generating plants are increased by the need to adapt their cold-end system to current environment standards (temperatures and heat gradients in rivers and reservoirs). To control these costs, simulation models have been developed, to estimate operating costs under different hypothetical service conditions (such as loading schedules). The models are based on empirical equations representing the main components of the heat cycle and cooling system, in a variety of configurations (cooling tower, river, dam, mixed system, etc). These are combined with statistical distributions of the different environmental parameters (atmospheric temperature and humidity, flows and temperature of rivers and dams, etc) over periods of hours, days, weeks, or longer. the statistical distributions are based on massive processing of data recorded at the site (by meteorologists and government agencies, the power plant, etc). The proposed methodology can also be used as a tool to optimize a power plant's cold-end system, or to evaluate the behaviour, as it affects operating costs, of any cooling system component, based on theoretical or empirical data about its operation. (Author)