Power Plant Performance Curves

While certainly not unique to the power industry, performance curves are central to design, operation, and testing of modern power generation systems, as well as many similar industrial plants. We will develop and apply these important formulations to several types of such systems. We will also discuss and illustrate when these work well and when they don't. The most common use of these approximations is to correct test results and to predict the operational response of complex systems the environment in which they operate. Examples in the text are based on GateCycle(TM); although they apply equally well to any other heat balance code. A mixture of English (U.S. Customary) and SI units are used throughout this text, as is common in the industry.