Combined Thermal-Hydro Power Generation: A Novel Approach of Plant Capacity Addition

Abstract

This paper proposes a hydro-power plant which is coupled with cooling water system of 500MW_e coal-fired thermal power plant to quantify the additional electric power and mitigate CO₂ emission. About 16.77m³/s of cooling water gravitationally flow from cooling tower basin  to CW basin with 1.5 meter gross head difference for recycling it  into condenser and auxiliary cooling water system in a 500MW_e coal-fired thermal power plant. Maximum 195kW_e hydro-power can be generated through installing a Kaplan turbine for plant capacity addition. Effect of gross head and flow rate variations are studied individually and result shows that power generation increases with head and flow. Hourly about 106.13 kg of coal and 47.94 kg of CO₂ emission can be reduced to generate 500MW_e combined thermal-hydro electric power. Generation cost and payback period of hydro power are about 71.62 paisa/unit and 2.04 years respectively.