Effects of rising dynamic requirements on the lifetime consumption of a combined cycle gas turbine power plant

The expansion of renewable energy production in Germany leads to a more volatile and intermittent electricity feed -in. For conventional power plants providing the residual load, this results in a much more dynamic operating mode. This paper aims to investigate the changes in the annual lifetime consumption of a selected combined cycle power plant due to the more dynamic operation. The results show that the significantly more dynamic power plant operation only leads to a moderate increase in life consumption caused by load cycle fatigue. The dominant damaging mechanism is creep fatigue, which is not affected by the dynamics of the operation. Overall, no relevant increase in total lifetime consumption was found due to the increasing dynamics of operation. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.