A statistical energy efficiency optimization method for coal-fired power generation systems

In a coal-fired power generation system, energy efficiency is increasingly focused on due to the fact that the key indices of power plant such as coal cost and emission are closely related to energy efficiency. However, many coal-fired power plants lack effective energy efficiency program due to: diversified unit equipment type, insufficient or outdated original parameter setting, or diversified operation load conditions. This paper presents a new statistical model for improving energy efficiency in a coal-fired power generation system by optimizing the parameter settings. This approach has been developed with large amount of real operation data collected by the deployed information systems in the power plants. This solution requires valid monitoring data and it is more adaptive comparing with traditional models because it is not equipment-specific and can cover much broader range of coal-fired power plants as well as different load conditions, especially those being operated at low load levels or lacked the accurate equipment parameters for simulation modeling.