Planning of efficient natural gas consumption in a combined cycle gas turbine power plant using evolutionary algorithms

Energy generation industry is growing rapidly to meet the increasing energy demand. One of the most usable raw materials for energy production is natural gas. Combined cycle gas turbine power plants have a big portion among the power plants using natural gas for energy production. Therefore, in this chapter combine cycle gas turbine power plants have been analyzed with respect to the effects of market price changes to the amount of natural gas which a combined cycle gas turbine power plant would need for production throughout a year. The proposed model takes the costs of natural gas, ignition and maintenance of the turbine into account. It utilizes an evolutionary algorithm to minimize the power plant’s risk and helps managers to find the optimal amount of natural gas consumption to achieve maximum profit. Also the proposed model is applied on a medium scale natural gas power plant for validation and the results are given.