Power station
Most power stations in the world burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas to generate electricity.
[1] In 1878, a hydroelectric power station was designed and built by William, Lord Armstrong at Cragside, England.
The electricity supplied power to lights, heating, produced hot water, ran an elevator as well as labor-saving devices and farm buildings.
A Babcock & Wilcox boiler powered a 93 kW (125 horsepower) steam engine that drove a 27-tonne (27-long-ton) generator.
This supplied electricity to premises in the area that could be reached through the culverts of the viaduct without digging up the road, which was the monopoly of the gas companies.
[3] In September 1882 in New York, the Pearl Street Station was established by Edison to provide electric lighting in the lower Manhattan Island area.
The war of the currents eventually resolved in favor of AC distribution and utilization, although some DC systems persisted to the end of the 20th century.
DC systems with a service radius of a mile (kilometer) or so were necessarily smaller, less efficient of fuel consumption, and more labor-intensive to operate than much larger central AC generating stations.
The economics of central station generation improved greatly when unified light and power systems, operating at a common frequency, were developed.
High-voltage AC transmission allowed hydroelectric power to be conveniently moved from distant waterfalls to city markets.
The advent of the steam turbine in central station service, around 1906, allowed great expansion of generating capacity.
Generators were no longer limited by the power transmission of belts or the relatively slow speed of reciprocating engines, and could grow to enormous sizes.
Building power systems out of central stations required combinations of engineering skill and financial acumen in equal measure.
Pioneers of central station generation include George Westinghouse and Samuel Insull in the United States, Ferranti and Charles Hesterman Merz in UK, and many others[5].
Contractual arrangements ("take or pay") with independent power producers or system interconnections to other networks may be effectively non-dispatchable.
Natural draft wet cooling towers at many nuclear power plants and large fossil-fuel-fired power plants use large hyperboloid chimney-like structures (as seen in the image at the right) that release the waste heat to the ambient atmosphere by the evaporation of water.
The induced or forced-draft cooling towers are typically rectangular, box-like structures filled with a material that enhances the mixing of the upflowing air and the down-flowing water.
These coolers have lower efficiency and higher energy consumption to drive fans, compared to a typical wet, evaporative cooling tower.
[citation needed] Power plants can use an air-cooled condenser, traditionally in areas with a limited or expensive water supply.
They consume additional auxiliary power and thus may have a higher carbon footprint compared to a traditional cooling tower.
These screens are only partially effective and as a result billions of fish and other aquatic organisms are killed by power plants each year.
[16][17] For example, the cooling system at the Indian Point Energy Center in New York kills over a billion fish eggs and larvae annually.
[18] A further environmental impact is that aquatic organisms which adapt to the warmer discharge water may be injured if the plant shuts down in cold weather[citation needed].
[20] A solar photovoltaic power plant converts sunlight into direct current electricity using the photoelectric effect.
[21] Solar thermal power plants use either parabolic troughs or heliostats to direct sunlight onto a pipe containing a heat transfer fluid, such as oil.
[23] With larger turbines (on the order of one megawatt), the blades move more slowly than older, smaller, units, which makes them less visually distracting and safer for birds.
Statkraft has built the world's first prototype osmotic power plant on the Oslo fjord which was opened on 24 November 2009.
Unlike coal power stations, which can take more than 12 hours to start up from cold, a hydroelectric generator can be brought into service in a few minutes, ideal to meet a peak load demand.
[27] As of 2022[update], the largest photovoltaic (PV) power plants in the world are led by Bhadla Solar Park in India, rated at 2245 MW.
They maintain the equipment with periodic inspections and log temperatures, pressures and other important information at regular intervals.
