Power Plant Simulation Software for Optimizing Thermodynamic and Financial Plant Operation PUBLIC ACCESS

A modular software system was developed to optimize thermodynamic and financial operation of the 350 MW Selkirk Cogen combined cycle power plant. The package is derived from commercially available modeling software, customized for this site. The system satisfies the information needs of both technical and business oriented personnel by: (1) direct simulation utilizing the simulator’s detailed, accurate, component-wise models and (2) lookup into a large database of pre-simulated plant scenarios which obey an established operating methodology. An unattended on-line module, with access to the distributed control system, continually compares simulator output with plant measurements. This provides measures of instrumentation health and current equipment performance indicators which are fed back to update the pre-simulated database. A series of example uses of the software is provided.