Introduction To Power Plant

Power Plants

Types of Power Plants

There are some major types:

• Thermal Power Plant( Single cycle Steam Turbine power plant(Coal,Furnace Oil, Gas,Nuclear), Combined cycle Power Plant( Gas Turbine(Gas Turbine + Steam Turbine), Combined cycle Power Plant (Diesel/Gas/Furnace Engines + Steam Turbine).

• Hydel Power Plant ( Run of River, conventional Reservoir Type)(Francis,Kaplan and Pelton etc.)           
  
• Geo Thermal Power Plants (Geothermal energy to Electrical energy by steam turbine)
  
• Wind Power Plants (Kinetic Energy of Wind to Electrical energy)
• Solar Power Plants (Solar Energy to electrical Energy)
• Biomass Power Plant (Biomass heat energy to Electrical energy)

Apart from that there are many set-ups which are producing power of relatively of much lower proportion.

Hydel,Solar, Wind and Biomass famously are of Renewable resources of Energy and of next to nothing production of CO2 emissions. Among them hydel power plant is one major source of power production world wide. Almost all these sources of power production require high initial cost and hydel also require erection/construction time while running costs are relatively very low.

Thermal and geothermal are non-renewable energy resources and have major share in energy mix worldwide. Robust system with low erection time and relatively low initial cost. Running costs are relatively high but they are very good with fluctuating owing to their robust feature.

There are many types of power plant among which thermal and hydel power plant are of most important types as they produce most of world's electrical power.

Thermal power plants  burns some sort of fuel ( such fossil fuels or Nuclear) mainly to produce heat energy that is converted to mechanical energy in a primer mover(e.g Gas Turbine, Steam Turbine, Reciprocating Engine), which is further converted to Electrical Energy in a Electrical generator driven by the prime mover.

While hydel power plants convert potential energy and kinetic energy of water into electrical energy by a primer mover(e.g water turbine such Francis, Kaplan and pelton Turbine etc).

The Energy is supplied in electrical form as this form of energy has the least irreversibilities or losses.