Wear investigation model for primary and secondary controlled thermal power plants of the Entso-E-grid

Project Number 362

Reliable and available primary and secondary control is a prerequisite for the operation of the electrical power system. This control power up to now can only be provided with high availability by the conventional power plants. In the cold winter period of 2011/12 the European power system for hours or even days was finally operated using only the potential of the cheap control power of the power plants because of very high marked prices of intraday power.

Adequate revenue for control power is for the power plant owner an important factor concerning the economy of the plant. In the future this revenue becomes more and more important because of the reduction of full load hours of the conventional plants. An exact knowledge about the real costs of control power is not available today. Therefore projects are necessary to investigate whether the revenues of today consisting of commitment and power prices are sufficient to balance the costs for this control in conventional power plants. These open questions shall become answered with the proposed project.

For typical power plants providing control power investigations shall be conducted with reality oriented prerequisites achieving results concerning loss of efficiency and wear of components during a year. With these results estimations shall be provided concerning additional primary energy volumes and additional maintenance efforts.

As an add on for the power plant owners possibilities have to be described to decide which plant in the fleet can operate economically providing control power and which plant cannot.

The project (continuation of VGB Project 333) is supported by the VGB-Technical Committee "Electrical Engineering, I&C, and IT".