Chapter 2

Modelling of power plants

A. Leva and C. Maffezzoni

2.1 Introduction

Modelling power plant processes may be approached from different points of view,
depending on the purpose for which the model is intended. Here, we shall restrict the
presentation to the case (most interesting for engineering) where the model is built
to allow system simulation over a rather wide range of operation (non-linear model)
and is based on first principles and design data. This specification naturally leads to a
model structuring approach based on the representation of plant components and of
their interconnections, with evidence given to variables and parameters corresponding
to well-defined measurements or physical entities. Possible experimental data are,
generally, not used for system identification but for model validation, which may also
include some model tuning. The models here are referred to as dynamic, that is, they
are able to predict transient responses, even for large process variations. Since power
plant dynamics operate on a range of time scales, it is advisable to focus on the use of
a dynamic model over a defined horizon. For simulation models representing an entire
power plant or a large subsystem, it is quite common to seek model accuracy over an
intermediate time-scale, i.e. in the range of a few tenths up to a few thousands of a
second. This will be the implicit assumption in the description of the basic models.
Finally, we shall limit the scope of this chapter to power plants based on the firing of
a fossil fuel, i.e. conventional thermal and gas turbine plant, possibly equipped with
heat recovery boilers.
There is a long track record of research and engineering effort in this area, dat-
ing back to the pioneering work of Chien et al. (1958), passes through the earlier
engineering-oriented works of Caseau et al. (1970), Weber et al. (1976), Modular
Modelling System (1983), Lausterer et al. (1984), Maffezzoni et al. (1984), and
leads to presently available simulation codes (APROS; ProTRAX; Cori et al., 1989;
SIMCON-X, 1994a,b). With reference to the survey papers of Carpanzano et al.