We established the thermodynamic analysis model by using the actual measurement parameters of 600 MW direct dry cooling power plant in Wuxiang, China. The performance, especially the exergy losses of the unit as well as its subsystems mainly including seven parts were obtained not only at one specific load but also at different loads. We have found that the exergy loss in the boiler is usually more than 70% of the total exergy loss of the system, while the exergy loss of the combustion occupies greater than 50% of that of the boiler. Therefore, it is crucial to reduce the losses in the boiler for energy saving potential improvement, especially that of the combustion and heat transfer. At the same time, the cold end optimization has relatively large potential for energy saving due to that the exergy efficiency of the air cooling system is quite low being about 5.7% or so. In addition, we have gotten the main changing trends of system performances along with the load change, including exergy loss, exergy efficiency and coal consumption, which were derived from the real-time system performance statistics according to a large amount of measured data in real time. In order to make the whole system run more efficiently, it is advised that the unit should run at the load better than 350 MW.
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