Effect of power grid frequency control on condensate regulation in large fossil-fired generating units

Primary frequency control (PFR) is vital to power grid stability. Its performance are hard to improve effectively due to generating unit equipment limits. Condensate flow rate can be regulate initiatively during short time period of PFR. Then heat regenerations of deaerator and heat exchangers can be released to help to increase or decrease generation power, which may great improve PFR performance without sacrifice security and stability of generation units. Condensate regulation is studied in this paper for PFR. Mathematic models were built with identifications using test data. The results show limits of traditional PFR controller and only slight improvements can be observed during grid disturbance simulations. New PFR controller may need to release condensate regulation functions.