Combined Cycle Journal has an interesting article that addresses the topic of automated startup procedures at combined-cycle plants. Their article summarizes a paper presented by Emerson’s Jeff Williams at the 2017 7F Users Group conference.

Jeff provided some impressive, monetary benefits realized by combined-cycle plant owners/operators who adopted automated startup procedures over their older, manual procedures:

• A southern US utility reduced fuel use by 54% over 55 starts and 290 load transitions, saving over $1-million in a year.
• A mid-Atlantic utility reduced fuel use by 26% over 50 starts, saving $250,000 annually.

The article goes on to outline the various applications for achieving more-consistent performance under dynamic operating regimes, as well as the necessary metrics. The complete article can be seen here, and other advanced power applications for optimizing plant performance can be found on the Ovation website.