Simulation and Economic Analysis of Coal Based Thermal Power Plant: A Critical Literature Review

Coal based fired power plant is a very complex unit. Today’s electric energy is playing an important role in the industrial and all-round development of every country. It is desired form of energy, because it can be produced easily and transmitted economically. Further, it can be used efficiently and easily to domestic and industrial applications. Performance evaluation of such units is becoming important because of increasing costs, competition and public demand on one way, while the risk of failure on the other. The failure-free operation of production unit seems to be impossible; also the failure occurrence is nearly an unavoidable phenomenon for all repairable industrial units and cannot be prevented completely. So, its impact and probability of occurrence should be minimized as much as possible. To increase the working time or maintain failure free operation of the plant for a long duration, it is necessary to maintain the plant at higher operational availability level. Thus working time can be increased by implementing the stand by systems parallel to active system in the plant. Formulation of the problem is carried out using Markov Birth-Death process using probabilistic approach and a transition diagram represents the operational behavior of the systems. The successful completion of a thermal power plant requires estimation of the fixed and variable costs involved in the project. The economic analysis of the coal based thermal power plant can be done on the basis of initial capital investment or fixed cost, operating cost and annual revenue.