Power Generation

Dr. Tahir Mahmood Lecture No. 4 Sections: A/B/C Days: Tuesday Dated: 25-09-2012

Plant Location
The determination of plant location is a complex problem depending on many factors and considerations, some of which cannot be interpreted in terms of economics. The location of a hydro-electric plant along with dam, head works etc. is governed by topographical and geological conditions at the various points along the stream.
Electrical Department 2

Plant Location
Though hydro-electric plants have many advantages like low operating costs and conservation of coal, the whole of the power demand of a country can never be economically met from hydro resources alone. Moreover, steam plants are needed to increase the firm capacity of system.
The capacity that can be made available with a predetermined level of reliability. It's very important for an electric utility to be able to count on firm capacity, because electricity must be available just when the customer needs it.
Dr. Tahir Mahmood, Electrical Department, uet Taxila 3

Electrical Department

Plant Location

The escalating oil costs have made the operation of diesel electric stations very uneconomical. They can, at the best, be used only as emergency plants when power from the grid is not available due to the forced outage.
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Plant Location
For steam stations, the choice of plant location is governed by the following considerations :
1. Transmission of energy. A power plant should be located as near to load centre as possible. This reduces the transmission costs and losses in transmission. However the modern power plants have large capacities and feed a grid which supplies power to large areas. In view of this, other considerations become more important than the consideration of locating the plant at the load centre.
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Plant Location
For steam stations, considerations : 2. Cost of real estate and taxes. steam stations need lot of space for installation of equipment and storage of fuel. The cost of land near a load centre may be very high as compared to that at a remote place.

Dr. Tahir Mahmood, Electrical Department, uet Taxila

Plant Location
For steam stations, considerations :

3. Transport of fuel. steam stations need lot of coal every day. The site should be such that coal can be transported easily from mines to the plant. Coal mines being generally away from the load centres, it is necessary to compare the two alternatives viz, locating the plant near coal pits and transmitting electricity through high voltage lines or locating the plant near the load centre and transporting coal. Dr. Tahir Mahmood, Electrical 8
Department, uet Taxila

Plant Location
4. Availability of water.
An ample supply of water must be available for condenser cooling. Thus, sites adjacent to large bodies of water are preferable. Alternatively tube-wells and cooling towers have to be installed and their cost must be taken into account. Availability of reasonable pure water as make up water is another requirement.

Dr. Tahir Mahmood, Electrical Department, uet Taxila

Plant Location
5. Disposal of ash. A steam station produces huge quantity of ash. A site where ash can be disposed off easily will naturally be advantageous. 6. Pollution and noise. A site near a load centre may be objectionable from the point of view of noise and pollution.

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Plant Location 7. Equitable growth of different areas.

It has been seen that availability of power from a nearby source in an area encourages setting up of heavy industries in that area. This can improve the economy of a backward area considerably.

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Plant Location
8. Reliability of Supply.
If all the big power stations are located on one side of a state, the reliability of supply in remote areas would be poor. As such generating stations should be located in different areas of the state so that reliability of supply is good at all points.

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Size of Plant

The size of plant depends on the purpose for which the plant is being set up.
If it is being set up for a private industry: the size would be governed by the amount of power required by the various sections of the industry and the likely increase in power demand in future.
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Size of Plant The size of plant depends on the purpose for which the plant is being set up.
If it is being planned as an emergency plant, the size would be governed by the load that must be supplied by the plant in the event of failure of grid supply.

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Size of Plant The size of the plant for supplying power to a given area will depend on the power needs of the area at present and the likely increase in power demand in next 5-10 years.

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Size of Plant The proposal for a hydro-plant will depend on the amount of water available, the additional power necessary for the grid and the likely increase in power demand in the next 10-20 years or so. It may be possible that the proposed hydro-plant has a capability of meeting a huge power demand.
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Size of Plant
To assess the electricity requirements and to plan the generation system, forecasting the power demand is very important. The long term load forecasting can be carried out using the statistical data of previous years. From the statistical data, a general trend and the mean rate of annual increase can be established.
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5.2. Size of Plant

To expand generation capacity in an optimum manner, for an estimated load growth, it is necessary to prepare a long term program for a period of next 30 years or so. The optimum plan should include:

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Size of Plant The optimum plan should include:

(1) The addition in system generation in different years. (2) The type of generation (hydro, coal or nuclear) to be developed in different years. (3) The proposed location of plants. (4) The size of the power plants.

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Size of Plant
The needs of power system security and reliability require that the generation systems should not be confined to one side of the area being fed but should instead be dispersed to different sides.

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Size of Plant The size of the steam plant to be added to the grid is, in addition to power demand, also governed by the fact whether the plant will be used as a base load station or as a peak load station and the extent to which it is required to contribute to increase the firm capacity of the hydro plants.
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Size of Plant

There are many advantages, mostly economical, in having a large plant size. Some of the costs are hardly affected by the size of the plant.
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Size of Plant
Coal handling equipment, cooling facilities etc. can also be operated at lesser cost per kilowatt-hour at larger installations.
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Size of Plant
The problems of site acquisition and development are less severe for one large size than for two or more smaller ones. Broadly speaking a large capacity plant will generate energy at a lower cost.
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Size of Plant
However, some factors tend to limit the plant sizes.
Thermal plants need lot of space (for coal storage, ash disposal, cooling towers) and large quantities of water.
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Size of Plant The amount of land and water required will preclude (Exclude) the use of many otherwise suitable plant sites. The system reliability is also affected by the plant size. The maximum size of plants and capability of system interconnection are also related.
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Size of Plant Finally the environmental pollution problems are more severe for large plants than for the smaller ones. The advantages of large plants seem to outweigh the disadvantages. As a matter of fact, the increase in electricity demand has forced the utilities to go in for larger and larger plant sizes.
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Size of Units
Large sized units have lower capital cost per kW, need less land area, require less operating labour and have better efficiency. As a result, the large units show a lower generation cost per unit of energy generated as compared to the small units. It has been estimated that the generation cost decreases by about 5 to 10% with each unit size doubling.
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Size of Units

The following considerations govern the selection of unit size for a proposed steam plant.
1. Economy. As discussed above, large sized units are economical both from the point of view of initial capital cost and operating cost.
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Size of Units
2. System strength. System stability requirements demand that in any system, the size of the largest unit should not be greater than around 8 % of the total installed capacity in the system.

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Size of Units
3. Plant capacity. The number of units in a power plant should neither be very small nor very large. As such the size of units for a power plant has to be compatible with the total plant capacity .

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Size of Units
4. Transmission facilities. A big power plant having large sized units would need sufficient transmission facilities to transmit power to load centers.

5. Reserve requirements. In general the system reserve requirements increase with increase in unit size.

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Size of Units
6. Status of technology. The design and development of large size units takes considerable time. In a developing country, it is advisable to increase the unit sizes slowly to gain experience in design, development and manufacture of units and operation of system having large sized units.
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Operating and Spinning Reserve

Every system must have a certain amount of reserve generating capacity to provide for overhaul of generating equipment, forced outage of equipment etc.
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Operating and Spinning Reserve

The following terms are commonly used in connection with this aspect:
1. Operating Reserve is the reserve above firm system load requirement to provide for Regulation within the hour to cover minute to minute variations, load forecasting errors, loss of equipment and equipment maintenance. It consists of spinning and/or non-spinning Reserve.
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Operating and Spinning Reserve

2. Spinning Reserve is that operating reserve which is connected to the bus and ready to take load. 3. Non-spinning Reserve is that operating reserve which is capable of being connected to the bus and loaded within a specified time.
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Size of Units & No. of Units

The alternative way of deciding the size and number of generating sets in the station is to choose the number of sets to fit the load curve as closely as possible. The capital cost of the larger number of sets is greater than that of the same capacity of plant in a smaller number of units of larger size. There should not be only one unit, nor should there be a large number of small sets of different sizes.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

Load factor and diversity factor do not give any idea about the reserve capacity required in a station. A new term is therefore introduced, defined as follows and called the plant capacity factor

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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

Another factor is defined to indicate the actual use that is made of the plant and is called the annual plant use factor

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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

Example 2.1:

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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

Example 2.1: Draw the load curve. Calculate the load factor. Choose the number and size of generator units to supply this load. Reliability of supply is to be maintained. Find the reserve capacity of the plant required. Calculate the plant capacity factor. Determine the operating schedule of the units in the station. Calculate the plant use factor.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

Fig. 2.1 is a load curve plotted from the above data. The maximum demand is 2,500 kW. If water resources were not available in the vicinity, the plant would normally be Diesel-electric. For a privately owned plant it could be a steam station if local conditions were suitable.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

The method and considerations for the selection of size of generating units are, however, common to all types of station so far as fitting in the load curve is concerned. Energy generated during 24 hours
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

Energy generated during 24 hours:38,750 kWh Maximum demand 2,500 kW

= 64.7% From the nature of the load curve, it will be seen that this is the load of a small industrial town, well distributed during day and night.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

From the load curve it will also be seen that three generator sets will be sufficient, with the following ratings
Two sets each of 1 ,000-kW capacity One set of 500-kW capacity

The reserve capacity required will correspond to the largest size of unit in the station. In this case, a set of 1,000 kW will have to be bought and kept as reserve.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

The total installed capacity of the station will therefore be =1,000 + 1,000 + 500 + 1,000 (reserve), i.e. 3,500 kW.

=38,750/(3,500 x 24) = 0.46, or 46%

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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

The capacity of the individual sets is chosen so far as possible to fit the load curve. Then it should be decided how and when and in what sequence the sets should be started and run. This arrangement is known as the operating schedule of the station. In arranging this schedule, care is taken to see that plant of the required capacity is kept ready for loading at the expected time of the load.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

With the type of load curve shown in Fig. 2.1, and the sizes of units chosen as above, the operating schedule can be arranged as follows
From 11p.m. to 5 a.m. only the 500-kW set is run. At 5 a.m. the load is expected to increase. The first 1000-kW set is therefore started and paralleled with the 500-kW set, all the load is transferred to the l,000-kW set, and then the 500-kW set is stopped. Thus one set of 1,000 kW is run from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., taking up the necessary load. Just before 7 a.m., when an increase in load is expected, the second 1,000-kW set is started and paralleled with the first one. Dr. Tahir Mahmood, Electrical 49
Department, uet Taxila

Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. the two 1 ,000-kW sets are running together. At 9 a.m. still more load is expected, the 500-kW set is started and paralleled with the other sets on the busbars and loaded along with them. Thus at the time of supplying the maximum load, between 9 a.m. and 12 noon, all three sets are running on full load. Between 12 noon and 1 p.m. the load is reduced, owing to recesslunchin industrial plants. One of the 1 ,000.-kW sets is stopped after the load has dropped to 1,500 kW. From 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., this set is run again along with the two others.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

At 5 p.m. the load again drops, owing to the working shift in industries being over. The load on the 500-kW set is removed and then this set is taken out. From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. only the two 1000-kW sets are running. At 7 p.m. the load increases, owing to lighting, and all three sets are run until 9 p.m. At 9 p.m. two sets are taken out and only one l,000-kW is run until 11p.m. After 11 p.m. only the 500-kW set need be run.

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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

At each time of change-over, care should be taken to ensure correct, paralleling and load transfer operation. With the operating schedule is fixed as above, the energy that could have generated by the capacity of plant actually running for the scheduled would be (500x6)+(l,000x2)+(2,000x2)+(2,500x3)+(l,500x 1) + (2,500 x 4) + (2,000 x 2) + (2,500 x 2) + (1,000 x 2) = 39,000kWh Energy actually required produced (consumed)= 38,750 kWh
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

=38,750/39000=0.994=99.4%

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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

In the above example, the load curve variation and the exact size of plant to fit the load curve are chosen as ideal, the plant use factor being practically 100 %. This would rarely be achieved in practice. It would be difficult to choose units of such capacity that when in use they could be run continuously on full load. In practice the plant use factor would be much smaller than 100%; it is, however, higher than the capacity factor when some reserve plant is necessary.
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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

A number of starting and loading operations can easily be handled in hydro- and Diesel-electric stations but are time-consuming in steam stations. The decision to shut down a machine and restart it later should be made after considering the economics of such a move. On one hand, to shut down and restart involves certain losses, which should be determined.

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Plant Capacity Factor & Plant Use Factor

On the other hand, to deload partially machines which are on load also involves certain losses, the magnitude of which depends on the length of time they are running at reduced load. If, therefore, it is possible to forecast the length of time during which the station would be running at reduced load, it is easy to estimate whether it is economical to take a machine off or to run all the equipment at a slightly lower load, and of course the decision would be made in the light of minimum losses.

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Assignment No. 2
End Problem of Ch.#2 + Examples