Production planning with hot section life prediction for optimum gas turbine management

The power production planning problem has been deeply investigated. Maintenance management and load allocation problems have been assumed as crucial aspects for achieving maximum plant profitability. Modeling of life consumption of hot section components has been considered as one of the key feature necessary to simulate the plant behaviour. The approach takes market scenarios, as well as actual status and performance of plant components into account. A supervisor algorithm provides the operating parameters needed to establish each plant loading. Economic implications related to maintenance strategies including postponement or anticipation of maintenance interventions are investigated and results obtained by the numerical simulation are presented and widely discussed. © 2008 Gas Turbine Society of Japan.