Advanced control of power plant

To match all the requirements of the grid, modern power stations must be flexible and able to carry out frequent and large load changes including two shift operations. It is thus no longer possible to design control systems for base load and expect that they will have good enough performance to operate over the full operating range. In addition extra design criteria such as minimising fuel consumption, emissions and life extension must be considered. This paper discusses some of these issues with particular reference to work carried out by the author and his research team