Inlet Air Cooling through Thermal Storage System for Combined Cycle Power Plants

The present paper reports on the results of a techno-economic investigation focused on the evaluation of inlet air cooling systems based on cool thermal storage for combined cycle power and flexibility augmentation. Cool thermal storage is obtained using stratified chilled water systems. A 130 MW Power Plant Combined Cycle applied to the Italian Electric Power Exchange is the object of this investigation. In order to evaluate the performance of the combined cycle under different operating conditions, commercial software has been used. The inlet cooling systems have been instead modelled all over a year period with an in-house developed computational code. An economical analysis has been then performed, also including an estimation of capital costs. Finally, a parametric analysis has been performed in order to investigate the influence of plant location and inlet cooling system size. The best economical results are obtained with a small-size inlet cooling system with optimized control strategies used to improve tank storage capacity. Plant location proved to influence meaningfully investment profitability.