Improved Method for Predicting Seasonal and Annual Shadowing from Cooling-Tower Plumes

摘要

An improved model developed for predicting long-term shadowing due to cooling-tower plumes is presented, and its assumptions are compared with those used in previous models. The model is based on a method for the selection of representative categories of similar plumes developed by Policastro and Dunn to reduce the large number of meteorological data cases in a season or year at a site to a much smaller number, (about 100) of cases which yield distinctively different plume predictions. Plume predictions for the reduced set of category representative cases are then made with the validated plume model. Full effects of sun angle by time of day and day of the year for the latitude and longitude of the site studied are included. The model yields seasonal and annual isopleths of hours of additional shadowing or isopleths of percentage reduction in total and beam solar energy arriving at the ground on a horizontal surface. Results for two hypothetical sites with 2000-MWe generating capacity are presented, one near Syracuse, New York, and the other near Spokane, Washington. (ERA citation 08:024401)