Exergy analysis has proven to be an effective approach for evaluating the performance of thermal power plants, offering insights beyond those provided by conventional energy analysis. The present work shows exergy-based performance analysis of the 250-MW unit of the total capacity
500 MW Chandrapura Thermal Power Station in Jharkhand, India. An analysis was performed using Engineering Equation Solver (EES) software to obtain the exergy destruction in major plant components. The results shows that the boiler is identified as the major source of exergy
destruction resulting in approximately 80.71% whereas steam turbine and condenser contributes 10.9 % and 2.1 % respectively of total exergy destruction in the in the examined components. The remaining losses are distributed between the feed-water heater and the pump, which
together account for less than 4% of the losses. Boiler pressure was varied to study exergy destruction, with optimal results at 167–178 bar, at which efficiency increased and exergy losses decreased; above this range, exergy losses increased. The influence of change in ambient temperature on exergy efficiency was also studied and it is found that, as the ambient temperature increases from 280 K to 310 K, the exergy efficiencies of both boiler and turbine decrease marginally. Whereas, a significant increase in the exergy efficiencies of condenser was detected at similar operating conditions. The exergy efficiency of the power plant as a whole was found to be 34.1%, indicating considerable scope for performance enhancement through optimizing the components and systems level-wise. The results also highlight the role of exergy analysis in detecting the inefficiencies as well as guiding of design trends in the thermal power systems.