Exergy-based analyses are important tools for studying and evaluating energy conversion systems. While conventional exergy-based analyses provide us with important information, further insight on the potential for improving plant components and the overall plant as well as on the interactions among components of energy conversion systems are significant when optimizing a system. This necessity led to the development of advanced exergy-based analyses, in which the exergy destruction, as well as the associated costs and environmental impact are split into avoidable/unavoidable and endogenous/exogenous parts. Based on the avoidable parts of the exergy destruction, costs and environmental impact, the potential for improvement and related strategies are revealed. This paper presents the application of an advanced exergoeconomic analysis to a combined cycle power plant. The largest parts of the unavoidable cost rates are calculated for the components constituting the gas turbine system and the low-pressure steam turbine. The combustion chamber has the second highest avoidable investment cost, while it has the highest avoidable cost of exergy destruction. In general, most of the investment costs are unavoidable, with the exception of some heat exchangers of the plant. Similarly, most of the cost of exergy destruction is unavoidable with the exception of the expander in the gas turbine system and the high-pressure and intermediate-pressure steam turbines. In general, the advanced exergoeconomic analysis reveals high endogenous values, which suggest improvement of the total plant by improving the design of the components primarily in isolation, and lower exogenous values, which suggest that the component interactions are of lower significance for this plant.
Intelligent MPPT Control for Wind Energy Conversion Systems Based on Reinforcement Learning
