Power Plants and Types of Power Plant

What is Power Plant?

A power plant or a power generating station, is basically an industrial location that is utilized for the generation and distribution of electric power in mass scale, usually in the order of several 1000 Watts. These are generally located at the sub-urban regions or several kilometers away from the cities or the load centers, because of its requisites like huge land and water demand, along with several operating constraints like the waste disposal etc. For this reason, a power generating station has to not only take care of efficient generation but also the fact that the power is transmitted efficiently over the entire distance and that’s why, the transformer switch yard to regulate transmission voltage also becomes an integral part of the power plant.

**Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by electricity source.^[17]**
Technology	Description	50th percentile (g CO2/kWh_e)
Hydroelectric	reservoir	4
Wind	onshore	12
Nuclear	various generation II reactor types	16
Biomass	various	18
Solar thermal	parabolic trough	22
Geothermal	hot dry rock	45
Solar PV	Polycrystalline silicon	46
Natural gas	various combined cycle turbines without scrubbing	469
Coal	various generator types without scrubbing	1001

=A power generation plant is a facility designed to produce electric energy from another form of energy, such as:

Heat (thermal) energy generated from:
- fossil fuels;
  - coal
  - petroleum
  - natural gas
- solar thermal energy
- geothermal energy
- nuclear energy
Potential energy from falling water in a hydroelectric facility
Wind energy
Solar electric from solar (photovoltaic) cells
Chemical energy from:

fuel cells
batteries

Fossil

Fossil fuel power plants burn carbon fuels such coal, oil or gas to generate steam that drives large turbines that produce electricity. These plants can generate electricity reliably over long periods of time. However, by burning carbon fuels they produce large amounts carbon dioxide, which causes climate change. They can also produce other pollutants, such as sulphurous oxides, which cause acid rain.