Economic Analysis for Nozzle Governing With Overload Valve Regulation Technology

With the implementation of low-carbon economy policy, clean energy (such as wind and solar energy) has been developing rapidly, and the percentage is increasing year by year; On the other hand, with a steadily growing percentage of residential electricity consumption and commercial electricity consumption, resulting in large electricity load difference between peak and valley, the load related requirements of modern steam power plants are noticeably changing. Whereas the past units being designed in base load now have to take part in peak load, and usually in a low load operation, unable to play its advantages of high efficiency in design load. In the article the current three main governing methods (i.e. nozzle governing, throttling governing and bypass governing) for steam turbine will be discussed and evaluated under economical criteria focused on the above described challenges for future power generating technologies. A new governing method is Nozzle governing with Overload Valve Regulation, which keeps the advantage that main steam pressure of the Nozzle governing steam turbine is higher under partial load conditions, and weakens the influence of the low efficiency of governing stage on high pressure turbine, effectively improves the efficiency of steam turbine unit under partial load conditions. In the turbine adopted the new governing method of Nozzle governing with Overload Valve Regulation, the first stage is governing stage, divided into several groups. Main steam from boiler goes through the main stop valve and main steam control valve in sequence, and then turns to the governing stage. When the load is below 85%THA, main steam control valve I, II and III are fully opened, main steam control valve IV is fully closed, and the unit is in sliding pressure operation. When the load is 85%THA, the main steam pressure can reach the rated pressure. With the load increasing, main steam control valve IV starts to open, but the main steam pressure maintains the rated pressure, adjusted to THA when main steam control valve IV is fully opened and the flowrate of governing stage reaches the maximum. In the load more than THA condition, the bypass valve starts to open, the main steam goes through the bypass steam room into the certain stage (as fourth), to meet the requirements of the super load, adjusted to VWO (about 108%THA) when the bypass valve is fully opened. Through the detailed description about the scheme set and calculation analysis about economy benefit of the new regulation technology of Nozzle governing with Overload Valve Regulation, it shows that with the annual load range of 40%THA–85%THA, the economy of turbine adopted the new regulation technology is better than bypass governing by about 21.6 kJ/kW.h. (CSPE)