Problem
A geothermal resource has a temperature of 180oC and a thermal load (Uin) of 20MW. The geothermal steam is directly used in a steam power plant to produce 3 MW of electrical power (E out).
Include all equations with variables and substitute values into equations to show work with units.
• What is the energy efficiency of the geothermal steam power plant?
• There are plans to modify the exploitation of this geothermal resource by changing the steam cycle to a binary cycle to produce electricity instead of direct geothermal steam use. This would reduce the electricity production to 2MW of electrical power (E out), but add the possibility to use an additional 10 MW of the geothermal resource thermal load to power the new district heating system of a nearby town (Q heating,out). With the new electricity production (2MW) and the new district heating system (10MW), what would be the new energy efficiency of the geothermal system with a binary cycle power plant?