Patent ID: 7801660

Claim:
A method for estimating compressor fouling impact in a combined cycle power block, the method comprising: determining a current performance of the combined cycle power block, the current performance comprising a performance of a gas turbine included in the combined cycle power block; normalizing the current performance of the combined cycle power block to one or more reference conditions; determining a baseline performance of the gas turbine utilizing stored predicted performance data associated with the gas turbine, wherein the determined baseline performance is indicative of a potential performance of the gas turbine that can be obtained by completing an offline compressor wash of the gas turbine; determining a predicted performance of the combined cycle power block utilizing the normalized current performance of the combined cycle power block with the performance of the gas turbine set to the determined baseline performance of the gas turbine; calculating a recoverable impact to the current performance of the combined cycle power block due to compressor fouling in the gas turbine based at least in part on subtracting the normalized current performance of the combined cycle power block from the predicted performance of the combined cycle power block; and calculating a recoverable impact to a fuel consumption of the combined cycle power block based on the calculated recoverable impact to the performance of the combined cycle power block.