Power Plant's Efficiency factors

Efficiency of  Power Plant 

Thermal Power Plant

Major Factor affecting the cost of thermal power plant:

2-Location

Thermal Power Plant unlike hydel power plant can be erected on more locations obviously because for hydel power station nature made route of rivers are interrupted to make a dam to produce electricity.
However, location of thermal power plant are carefully selected in feasibility reports. There are locations which are excluded for location of thermal power stations including flooded areas, places where earthquakes are frequent, electrical transmission and distribution cost is very important as it is very expensive, areas where weather doesn't go too harsh and too dynamic and soil structure etc.

3-Availability Of Water

Water is very important entity of power plant which in huge amount is used daily. So the location is selected where water is readily available in abundance. Hundreds of tons of water is needed in power plant each depending upon the capacity( MW ) and type of power plant( as steam turbine single need a huge amount of water as compared to gas turbine or diesel engine as in later two water is needed in cooling circuit which is close cycle circuit and only water lost in Cooling towers).

4-Water Quality 

Water available for power plant's usage should be better quality as the cost which would be spent to make it usable for the power plant usage, is entirely dependent upon its quality.
Quality means its turbidity, hardness, acidic salt and other salts which would be needed to be removed or lower their concentration to the level where they would be no longer harmful to the Closed water circuit material and other related equipment.

After plant erected, the running cost also depend how the equipment or personnel handling it. As if automatic valves which make the certain parameter(pH,hardness etc) to recommended value if fail to work then the manual handling could spend an additional value in the cost of chemical which are being used to maintain the quality of water.

5-Fluctuation of Electricity Load

This factor affects the running cost of power plant and is important to the low capacity (20MW to 300MW) supporting power plant as high capacity power plant aren't meant to run on fluctuating load demand.

The fuel cost when electricity load changes is highly affected because power producing machines are made to run on certain load on optimum efficiency while the efficiency in ramping up and down the load is significantly lower. That's why the fluctuation load affects the efficiency.