Power plant performance using heat rate

Heat rate is one of the metrics that can be used to measure the performance of a power plant. Heat rate is defined as the amount of energy needed as input to produce a unit of power output. In addition to heat rate, there are other parameters, such as efficiency, fuel costs, and emissions levels, that are considered. For more details about heat rate, please refer to https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=107&t=3

Typically, to calculate the heat rate or any other metric, various data points of various parameters need to be collected over a period of time. In other words, these can be referred to as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). To calculate metrics from various dimensions, large datasets need to be gathered; that's one of the reasons why analyzing such large volumes of datasets is referred to as a big data problem. These KPIs will provide an insight into efficiency and also an opportunity to improve the power plant efficiency for various persona to make key decisions, by comparing metrics over time and over different sites:

• Is there a performance degradation in an asset over time?
• Is there an opportunity to change the operating setting of an asset?
• Compare the asset performance across the sites with similar assets.
• Forecast the power consumption by asset, plant, and site.