We congratulate Steffen Asmus on his diploma defense

On 12.08.2024, Mr. Steffen Asmus successfully defended his diploma thesis on "Analysis of the impact of storage operation on the gas and steam turbine process and the district heating supply of the Neubrandenburg municipal utilities". The thesis was supervised by Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Sebastian Rochau.

Mr. Asmus had the task of investigating the interactions of a short-term storage facility on the gas and steam turbine power plant (CCGT) and the entire district heating supply system in Neubrandenburg. This included balancing the combined heat and power system, identifying typical operating conditions and creating models for the CCGT process, the short-term storage facility and the heat pump. He was also tasked with developing operating scenarios for heat load shifting and analyzing the effects on the CCGT process. Finally, a technical, economic and ecological assessment of the future heating network and a comparison with the initial state were to be carried out.

The student began his investigations by creating a calculation model for the composite heating system and the CCGT plant. The calculation program ProcessExcel and the SQL databases of the process control systems (ABB-Procontrol) were used for this purpose. The evaluated hourly data from 2018 was used to record typical characteristics of the system, in particular the combined heat and power plant. The aim of the modeling was to determine the operating states of the heat generation systems using as few input variables as possible, including the outside temperature, heat demand and electrical output of the gas turbine.

The ProcessExcel calculation algorithm was then determined in three scenarios (summer, transition, winter) and in three operating modes of the combined heat and power system: Full load operation, heat-led operation and price-optimized operation. These scenarios were then evaluated. Based on these calculations, the technical, economic and ecological effects on the combined heat and power plant and the district heating system were analyzed. The different operating modes were compared with each other in order to identify the optimum operating mode for the district heating system.

From the analysis of the optimal mode of operation, Mr. Asmus derived technical measures that should be considered in the future operation of the combined heat and power plant and that could be further developed beyond the scope of his work.

We congratulate Mr. Asmus on his achievement and wish him all the best for the future.