Examining relationships between coal characteristics and the performance of TVA power plants. Part 1. Approach and some early results

This paper describes an ongoing program to examine historic TVA coal and power plant performance data for the purpose of searching for relationships between coal characterization and various measures of power plant performance. Power plant performance parameters of interest include unit efficiency, boiler capacity, boiler availability, plant operating costs, and plant maintenance costs. The program is being conducted using TVA data from the past 18 years (1961-1978) as the data base. Early results of the program show that unit heat rate, slagging outages, and maintenance costs are strongly influenced by coal ash and coal sulfur, at least for some TVA plants. Unit capacity and unit availability have not been shown to be strongly dependent on coal ash and sulfur in early results.