Last week a friend asked me about typical heat rate values for combined cycle plants in Mexico... after quick reflection, I realized that despite my long time in the industry and focus on thermal performance, I had forgotten what typical heat rates look like for our most common plants...
Here's a refresher (table below). Definitively keep in mind these are off-the-cuff.
These are not precise values at all, especially if you convert them from %Eff to Heat Rate units, you'd see they're not exact. However, they are ballpark values easy to remember. Next time someone asks me I might've forgotten these values but I'll share my microblog post with them.

As additional note, to make it easier to remember about these values...
ReplyDelete- Combined cycles are almost 50% efficient.
- Rankine and Simple cycles are about 1/3 efficient.
The record keeping combined cycle efficiency few years ago was 62%. However, that's not a typical heat rate value.