Improving the Flexibility and Efficiency of Gas Turbine-Based Distributed Power Plants

摘要

For the past 100 years across most of the world, consumers have re-ceived their electricity from large central power plants, which provide energy to the entire system from a single location via a network of transmission lines. This model, which relies heavily on fossil fuels, is facing an increasing number of challenges. The major initial efforts to reduce the environmental impact of power generation centered on fuel switching from coal to natural gas, with plans for massive centralized coal-fired power stations giving way to more efficient, less polluting, natural gas-fired power plants in the so-called "dash for gas," changing the power mix from predominantly thermal coal-fired steam turbine plant to a more even split between coal and combined cycle gas turbines.