Study of Supercritical Coal Fired Power Plant Dynamic Responses and Control for Grid Code Compliance

根据预计的经济增长和一些现有发电厂的预期寿命，到2015年，英国预计将面临超过20GW的电力短缺。目前正在考虑各种各样的新一代技术。核能发电从建造到发电需要很长时间；事实上，预计新核电站最早的发电时间将是2018年。可再生能源本身无法产生足够的电力来填补这一缺口。目前英国约40%的电力来自天然气/石油，但天然气/石油的价格面临着巨大的波动和不确定性。因此，天然气/石油不是填补巨大发电能力缺口的合适选择。为了满足电力需求、环境、财政和性能等方面的各种要求，燃煤发电确实是急需的，也是弥补代沟的现实选择。英国已经制定了在不久的将来建造新的燃煤发电站的计划。在中国，目前超过70%的电力是由煤炭产生的。中国几乎每个月都有新的燃煤发电站投入发电。在美国，335830兆瓦的电力是由煤炭产生的。在未来的许多年里，煤炭很可能仍将是发电的主要燃料。毫无疑问，煤在发电中起着重要作用，但我们必须使它更清洁。超临界燃煤电厂技术是提高效率的主要选择之一，因此减少了单位发电量的二氧化碳排放量。事实上，使用超临界发电的电厂的能源效率高达46%，比目前的燃煤电厂高出约10%。另一方面，该技术成本低于其他清洁煤技术，可以及时与适当的CO2捕集技术充分集成。除了更高的能源效率，超临界电厂的低排放水平是通过使用成熟的排放控制技术来实现的。然而，采用超临界锅炉的电厂面临着来自英国国家电网规范（NGC）合规性的巨大挑战。由于英国电网规模相对较小，英国电网法规的要求远高于其他欧洲国家。超临界蒸汽电厂最重要的问题是没有传统电厂的汽包所提供的储存能量。因此，电厂将努力尽快达到《电网规范》中10%的频率响应要求，确保超临界锅炉发电符合NGC要求是获得英国接受这一极具前景的清洁煤技术的重要先决条件。发电公司已经向国家电网公司提出了电网规范审评请求，要求对电网规范变更接受超临界电厂的可能性进行全过程建模和仿真研究，以更清晰地了解超临界燃煤电厂的动态响应情况，并研究改善动态响应的可行策略。此外，在英国建立以大学为基础的研究能力是至关重要的，以提供研究解决方案，以应对在发电中采用超临界技术所带来的挑战，并为未来的电力工程师提供所需的培训。目前，英国没有运行超临界或超超临界锅炉，这使得英国研究人员很难单独进行上述研究。世界上有400多座这样的反应堆，中国正在运营其中的24座，还有更多正在建造中。因此，我们提出了与中国顶尖大学合作进行这项具有挑战性的研究的建议。

By 2015, the UK is expected to face an electrical power shortage of over 20GW, based on projected economic growth and projected life expectancy of a number of existing power plants. There is currently an exceptionally wide variety of new generation technologies being considered. Nuclear power generation will take a long time from build to generation; in fact, the earliest estimated time of generation from new nuclear power stations would be 2018. Renewable energy alone is not capable of generating enough electricity to fill this gap. Around 40% of the current electricity is generated by gas/oil in the UK, but the price of gas/oil faces a huge fluctuations and uncertainty. So gas/oil is not the suitable choice to fill the big electricity generation capacity gap. To meet the various requirements in electricity demand, environment, finance and performance, coal fired power generation is really in need, actually the realistic choice, for compensating the generation gap. Plans have been made for new coal-fired power stations to be built in the UK in the near future. In China, more than 70% of electricity is currently generated by Coal. New coal fired power stations bring into generation almost every month in China. In American, 335,830MW electricity is generated by coal. It is likely that coal remains a dominant fuel for electricity generation from many years to come. Coal is, no doubt, playing an important role in electrical power generation but we must make it cleaner. Supercritical coal fired plant technology is one of the leading options with improved efficiency and hence reduced CO2 emissions per unit of electrical energy generated. Indeed, power plants using supercritical generation have energy efficiency up to 46%, around 10% above current coal fired power plants. On the other hand, this technology costs less than other clean coal technologies and can be fully integrated with appropriate CO2 capture technology in a timely manner. In addition to higher energy efficiency, lower emission levels for supercritical plants are achieved by using well-proven emission control technologies. However, power plants adopting supercritical boilers face great challenges from the UK National Grid Code (NGC) compliance. The UK grid code is far more demanding than in other European countries due to the relatively small scale of the UK electricity network. The most significant issue for a supercritical steam plant is the absence of the stored energy provided by the drum of a conventional plant. As a result the plant would struggle to produce the 10% frequency response requirement in the Grid Code quickly enough Ensuring NGC compliance for supercritical boiler power generation is an important pre-requisite for gaining acceptance in the UK for this highly promising cleaner coal technology. The generation companies have already proposed the Grid Code review request to NGC for the possibility of grid code change to accept supercritical plant There is an urgent demand to conduct the whole process modelling and simulation study to get a clearer picture of the dynamic responses of the supercritical coal fired power plant and to study the feasible strategy to improve the dynamic responses. Also, it is essential to establish the university based research capacity in the UK to provide research solutions in response to the challenges arising from adopting supercritical technology in electrical power generation and also to provide the training needed for future electrical power engineers. Currently, no supercritical or ultra-supercritical boilers operate in the UK, which make it difficult for UK researchers alone to conduct the above proposed study. There are more than 400 such units worldwide, with China operating 24 of them and more to be built. So this proposal is proposed to collaborate with Chinese top universities for this challenging research.