Feasibility analysis of solar photovoltaics for the feeding of cooling pump of a natural gas power plant

Abstract

In the present work, the energy and exergy analysis of combined cycle power plant were carried out using the actual operating parameters to investigate the exergetic efficiency, exergy destruction/losses for the components. The energy and exergy efficiencies of the combined cycle power plant were found to be 48.4% and 47.2%, respectively. The results of the energy analysis show that the condenser is associated with the highest energy losses occurred in the system but according to the exergy analysis, the combustion chamber has the highest exergy destruction rate among the system components. The attention is focused on a solar photovoltaic (PV) system satisfying partly the energy demands of an cooling water pumps. An integrated solar Photovoltaic Combined Cycle System is proposed as a means of integrating a photo voltaic solar thermal plant with the modern combined cycle power plants. The 1 MW direct solar PV system which supply the electricity of the cooling water pump that uses electricity most in the system is proposed as a way to increase the efficiency of this plant. The electricity consumption of this pump is thus reduced by about 0.25% with the usage of the electricity directly supplied by the solar PV generator. Electricity from the solar PV system is partly used to operate a cooling pump to mitigate the electricity demands. The 29.2% of the electricity demanded by the cooling pump is provided by the photovoltaic production.