The growing desire for sponsors of power generation projects to share risk with the lenders has promoted the use of computational tools, simulating and evaluating from a techno-economic viewpoint long-term, high-risk projects. Such models need to include reliable engine diagnostics, life-cycle costing and risk analysis technique.

This paper presents a Decision Support System (DSS) for the assessment of power generation projects using industrial gas turbines. The software, programmed in Visual Basic in Excel, runs the object-oriented software Pythia which has been developed by the Department of Propulsion, Power and Automotive Engineering at Cranfield University and which can perform gas turbine performance calculations, including off-design conditions, with or without degradation effects providing thus very reliable engine diagnostics. Moreover, a life cycle cost, assessed using manufacturer methodology for instance, can be integrated into the economic model. The degree of uncertainty relating to technical and economic factors is assessed using a normal distribution and the level of risk can then be evaluated using a risk analysis technique based upon the Monte Carlo Method. The DSS therefore provides charts and result tables to support the decision making, allowing the user to achieve a good level of confidence using new techniques of risk management.

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