Talk:Power station
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Fixes
Generators found in power stations don't have cranks. Cooling towers give off waste heat due to the inefficiency of heat engines - "steam" is ambiguous in this context because the water vapor emitted by a cooling tower has nothing to do with the working fluid in the plant. Some plants use river water for the condensors. This article needs more work! --Wtshymanski 23:20, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It occurs to me that photoelectric and fuel-cell power stations don't have rotating generators. These are a little uncommon.--Wtshymanski 22:26, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Energy Center vs Older terms (Power Plant, Power Station, Steam Electric Station, etc.)
For thirty plus years the trend in the utility industry is to name / rename their electric generating stations with the ending "Energy Center" in recognition that these assets do not make power but convert a supply source of (mostly chemical, fission, potential, kinetic, thermal, light, wave, or tidal) energy into electric energy.
Energy is defined as the ability (capacity) to do work.
Power is the (time-)rate at which work is done.
Electricity has the capacity to perform work for a period of time, as determined by the user.
The utility can charge for total flow (KWH) of electricity during a period and for the peak flow of electricity (KW) during that period if the proper metering is in place to record the peak usage and if the delivery contract allows for this option.
This topic should be redirected to Energy Center or Energy Station or Energy Conversion Plant.
- Can you direct me to a reference that uses "Energy Center" as a preferred term for what I would call a "power plant" or, better, a "generating station" ? Google shows nearly 6 million hits for "power plant" and only 500,000 for "energy center" - and the few Web references I checked seem to be for educational institutions or visitor centers, not for power plants. I don't think this topic should be redirected to a term that I don't see used at all for the same subject. I also have a prejudice against empty neologisms for things that have always had perfectly reasonable names. --Wtshymanski 07:49, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- I think that changing the article is premature because not all utilities are using this convention on their new power plants, yet. Calpine has named a bunch of its new power plants in California with the "energy center" ending, but some of them carry different endings such as "cogeneration" and "project". Also, none of the new plants built by other companies, at least in California, have the ending of "energy center" (according to the California Energy Commission, but they may not use the same names as the companies use, though). I suggest that "energy center" be added to the alternative names instead.
- I encourage you (the writer of the above) to get a Wikeipedia user ID - I've looked at the edits you've been making and they look like solid contributions on some of my favorite topics. I dislike the "Energy Center" designation but I think Wikipedia must call these plants what their owners call them - so we may wind up some day with an article called [[New Age Crystal Politically Correct Tree Hugger Energy Center {power station)]] or the like. --Wtshymanski 15:14, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Article name question
If, as the article states, they are most commonly known as "power plants", why is the article located at "power station"? I think WP policy is to use the most common name, is it not? - Bantman 23:51, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- It's a U.S. / British usage thing. Policy is to leave articles about non-country specific topics in the version of English chosen by the original author. Merchbow 02:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Power plant operator
Is there anything in this article that can be merged into this? Or should they be kept seperated? --Dangherous 18:55, 12 April 2006 (UTC)s
[edit] Excuse me
I just revised the "Cooling tower and waste heat" section so as to make it known that all large and small cooling towers are not necessarily huge hyperbolic chimney-like structures. The hyperbolic cooling towers are natural draft/draught towers mostly used at nuclear power plants and some large thermal power plants. However, many large thermal power plants, petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, other industrial plants, waste-to-power plants, geothermal plants, etc. use fan induced-draft or fan forced-draft towers which are not at all hyperbolic or chimney-like. When I made my revision, I neglected to use the revision summary for which I apologise. - mbeychok 23:32, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Is there some diffrenece in meaning between power plant and power station?
Appearance point of view would be the same.But power plant is very limited to what generate power(boiler house,turbine hall,cooling tower,esp,stack,coal bunker & storage)where power station include everything in that area , further with substation, workshop,admin.office,resident & etc.This is what I really feel when one say "station" or "plant".user :SKW 26:07:06
- To the best of my knowledge, there isn't. --Smack 22:42, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Duplicate mentions of solar energy
Please don't remove the apparently duplicate mentions of solar energy from this article. Electricity can be generated from sunlight using the photoelectric effect (solar panels), or by just focusing a bunch of light at a central point to create heat. Smack 22:42, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Relative Efficiencies
I think it would be helpful to discuss the relative efficiencies of different power plants.--Tobyw 13:56, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Power Station Infobox
I have created a Power Station Infobox Template for use with individual power station articles, most of which have links into this main article. Example uses are Hazelwood Power Station, Victoria and Tumut 2 Power Station, New South Wales. There are almost certainly other fields to add but this is a reasonable start. amitch 13:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] How much power?
How much power do each of these power plant types produce? -Ravedave (help name my baby) 22:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
- Ravedave, according to this report ==> [1], the worldwide production of electricity in 2004 was 17,387 TWh (i.e., 17.4×1015 Wh) of which: Nuclear = 15.8%, Fossil fuel = 65.8%, Hydraulic = 16.4% and Others (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, etc.) = 2.0%. Is that the sort of information you wanted?
- Note that 17,387 TWh of annual electricity production is equivalent to producing 1.985 GW of power for 24 hours per day over 365 days. - mbeychok 01:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
