Common DC bus concept in power plant auxiliary system: Part II economic analysis

With the increasing use of medium voltage drive systems in power plant, it is interesting to develop a novel internal electrification scheme based on common DC bus concept. It has been substantiated by the author's prior work that reliability of common DC bus solutions can reach the same or even better level than conventional AC bus ones. In this paper, further study was conducted to take the factors besides of reliability into account for example power generation increase, disturbance ride through, black start, etc, through which the performance of common DC bus solutions can be evaluated from comprehensive angles and compared with conventional AC bus ones. The results show that through proper design, common DC bus topology is able to offer superiority over AC bus topology in cost wise, annual economic benefit wise and payback wise.