74-09: Cooling Tower Consumed Power and Its Relationship to Power Plant Output

Cooling tower fans consume about O. 5% of the output of a 1200 MWe light water nuclear plant. A 10% change in tower size may reduce consumed power by 10% while losing four times this saving in turbine generator output, depending on turbine efficiency variation as a function of back pressure. Paper shows the effect increasing or decreasing tower size will have on both peak summer and annual plant output for two different heat rate curves and includes the dollar savings and penalties for two diverse sets of economic factors.