Substitution of Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) with Simple Cycle Gas Turbines (SCGT) and its Impact on Fossil Fuel Consumption in Power Industry

Thermal power plants consume near to 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year. So, optimization of power plants in terms of fuel consumption has become an important issue because of economic values and environmental effects. More than 50 percent of electricity is produced by CCGT and SCGT. In addition, CCGT efficiency is much higher than that of SCGT. So, in this paper these technologies are compared. The outcomes show benefits over costs ratio is affected by fuel price and utilization time. In subsidy prices (before energy price reform), B/C ratio of this substitution is less than one. If fuel price increases more than 500 Rials per cubic meter, using CCGT is more economical than SCGT for mid load power plants. If fuel prices are more than 1300 Rials per cubic meter, B/C ratio will be greater than one in any utilization time. But this ratio is not greater than one for all cases. If all SCCTs are substituted with CCGTs, yearly natural gas consumption will reduce near to 3.5 billion cubic meters. These are 7% and 2.5% of yearly fuel consumption in power plants and total yearly natural gas consumption respectively.