SONG Hong-wei, GAO Ning, GUO Xu-chao, ZHANG Hao, JIN Guo-qiang
Under the guidance of the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, China is building a new power system mainly based on renewable energy. As frequent peak and frequency adjustments of coal-fired units have become the norm, studying the energy consumption characteristics in the process of variable load transients is of great significance in maintaining the economic and stable operation of the new power system. This paper studied and established an analysis model for the variable load transient process of coal-fired units. It analyzed the energy consumption characteristics of a coal-fired unit in the variable load transient process under multi-interval and multi-rate, and revealed the fundamental reason for the change of energy consumption of the unit. The results show that when the unit is under variable loads within different load ranges, the increase in energy consumption during the load increasing process is jointly caused by the increase in exergy loss and the increase in exergy storage. During the load decreasing process, the increase in energy consumption is partly offset by the release of exergy storage, and the increase rate of coal consumption is significantly reduced. For example, when the load interval is reduced from 90% to 100% THA to 50% to 60%, the coal consumption rate increases by 14.2 and 7.8 g•(kW•h)-1 in the load up and load down process respectively. Therefore, the feed-forward coal feeding rate by varying the load interval during the load increasing process is conducive to improving the unit control effect. The higher the load change rate of the unit is, the higher the coal consumption rate will be during the load rise, while the coal consumption rate will be lower during the load fall. The reason for the above phenomenon is that the exergy storage changes in the opposite direction during load up and down. In addition, during the load decreasing process, the faster the exergy storage is utilized, the more the exergy loss will increase. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the operating parameters through the distribution law of exergy storage release to reduce the exergy loss. In conclusion, the change in exergy storage is the key factor causing the difference in energy consumption during transient processes, and it is necessary to optimize the unit’s operating strategy using the change in exergy storage to improve the unit’s control effect. The above conclusions provide technical guidance for the unit’s transient operating strategy.