A data processing technique for steam turbines

The author describes an application of state estimation techniques to the power plant steam turbines as an alternative to computers. The steam turbine state estimator is applied to a 250 MW, double flow, single-reheat cross-compound steam turbine with seven feedwater heaters. The turbine system has 18 state variables. The state estimator is tested under a wide range of measurement noises and measurement redundancy ratio (measurement redundancy ratio is defined as the ratio of the number of measurements to that of the number of state variables). Results show the state estimator significantly improves the measurement accuracy