Object-Oriented Simulation Approach to an Industrial Problem in a Combined Cycle Power Generation Plant

In this paper, Object-Oriented Modelling and Simulation (OOMS) is applied to a typical industrial problem, namely Primary Spinning Reserve scheduling in a Combined Cycle Power Plant. This allowed to optimise the control system so as to comply with the Network Code requirements in the presence of dynamic constraints posed by the plant main machineries. A simulation model of the plant was written in the Modelica language, making extensive use of the ThermoPower library, and thanks to the OOMS approach, said model was tailored to represent only physical parts strictly related to the problem. The availability of the simulator allowed to test different control solutions and to find the best one right from the system engineering phase. This has drastically reduced the commissioning time, helping also in the definition of the test schedule. Selected experimental results are presented and discussed, as both a validation of the model, and a proof for the efficacy of the adopted approach.