Making power plants more efficient

Despite the important necessary increase of renewable energy in the EU, large-scale power plants continue to form the backbone of secure energy supply, generating around 80 % of electricity. It is evident that improvement in the energy efficiency of these fossil fuel and nuclear plants would greatly contribute to energy conservation, natural resource preservation, emissions reduction and environmental protection.

Figuur 1
Electricity generation by fuel used in power plants, EU-27, 2006
(% of total, based on GWh)

This project will develop methods and technologies to increase the efficiency of large-scale power plants by reducing the measurement uncertainty of several critical parameters, including temperature and electrical output. Research will also be carried out into advanced materials that could be used to build more energy-efficient turbines in the future.

Support will be needed from policy makers and legal bodies to ensure that power plant operators are able to put the research results into practice, and all EU citizens will eventually benefit from potential increases in energy efficiency.

VSL has two substantial contributions to this European project. The first one is in the field of temperature measurements of water having an inhomogeneous temperature distribution in big pipe lines. VSL is evaluating the measurement uncertainty that can be achieved by means of conventional methods and by means of measuring the speed of sound and converting this speed to a temperature.

The second mayor part that VSL is taking care of, is the construction of a measurement set-up to be able to measure on-site the electrical power output with an uncertainty better than 0.05%.

More information can be found on the project website http://www.power-plant-efficiency.de/ or by contacting the VSL contact person Gertjan Kok (gkok@vsl.nl).