Selection of Climatic Design Points for Gas Turbine Power Augmentation

There is a widespread interest in the application of gas turbine power augmentation technologies such as evaporative cooling and mechanical chilling in the mechanical drive and power generation markets. Very often, the selection of the design point is based on the use of American Society of Heating and Refrigeration Engineers (ASHRAE) data or a design point that is in the basis of design for the project. This approach can be detrimental and can result in a non optimal solution. In order to evaluate the benefits of power augmentation, users can use locally collected weather data, or recorded hourly bin data set from databases such as typical meteorological year (TMY), engineering weather data (EWD), and integrated weather surface (IWS). This paper will cover a suggested approach for the analysis of climatic data for power augmentation applications and show how the selection of the design point can impact performance. The final selection of the design point depends on the specific application, the revenues generated and installation costs. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to treat this topic in a structured analytical manner by comparing available database information with actual climatic conditions.