A method for obtaining operating parameters of a power plant includes data mining a historical operating condition database for the power plant with a partitional clustering algorithm to generate a statistical model, and calculating dynamic operating condition target values from the statistical model taking into account current operating condition data of the power plant. The method further includes performing a real-time energy-loss analysis based on the dynamic operating condition target values and automatically identifying at least one operating parameter of the power plant from the energy-loss analysis. The partitional clustering algorithm can be a k-means clustering algorithm.