Today, we’re going to look at what a Power Plant is,
different types, and why automation is important in the Power Plant business.
Here at RealPars, we love making videos that help you to discover new and exciting topics,
so if you enjoy viewing this video as much as we enjoyed making it,
click the like button below.
Remember to click subscribe and the little bell
and you’ll receive notifications of new RealPars videos
when they become available,
so you’ll never miss another one!
In its simplest form, a Power Plant,
known also as a Power Station,
is an industrial facility used to generate electricity.
To generate power, a power plant needs to have an energy source.
One source of energy is from the burning of fossil fuels,
such as coal, oil and natural gas.
Then we also have nuclear power,
and finally renewable energy sources
such as wind, solar, wave and hydroelectric.
Originally, the only source of power was Direct Current, or DC systems,
but it wasn’t until Alternating Current,
or AC systems were introduced
that the power could be carried the distances necessary
to be suitable for distribution to the masses.
Hydroelectric Power Plants generate power
by converting the force of water to turn large generators.
Hydroelectric Power Plants fall into three different categories.
First up is “Impoundment”.
An Impoundment facility typically uses a store of river water
from a dam in a reservoir.
When water is released from the reservoir,
it flows through a turbine which generates motion.
This turning motion activates a generator to produce electricity.
Next up we have “Diversion”.
A Diversion is fairly similar to an Impoundment facility,
but may not need the use of a dam,
but works by channeling a portion of a river through a canal or a penstock.
The last type of Hydroelectric Power Plant is “Pumped Storage”.
Pumped Storage stores its energy by pumping water uphill to a reservoir
at a higher elevation.
When there is a demand for power,
the water is released from the high elevated reservoir
into a lower reservoir.
This generates electricity when it flows through a turbine
generating motion, and electricity.
Thermal Power Plants generate electricity
by converting heat into electricity,
essentially by burning a fuel.
One example of this is a nuclear power plant.
Nuclear power plants use reactors heat to turn water into steam.
The steam is then sent through a turbine,
which, as we’ve already learned,
generates movement of a generator,
which in turn generates electricity.
A coal power plant works in much the same way,
but instead of a nuclear reactor heating water to make steam,
the heat from the burning coal powers a steam turbine.
The next type of power plant we will look at
is a solar power plant.
This type of plant uses the suns energy
to convert into electricity.
This is achieved by using Photovoltaic, or PV panels,
made up from a number of semiconductor cells
that release electrons when they are warmed by the thermal energy of the sun.
Solar energy is one of the cleanest ways of generating electricity.
The solar panels get connected to the grid
and can be used to supplement a thermal power plant resources.
They can be used in domestic environments too,
and with the aid of batteries,
can reduce households energy consumption drastically,
without burning any fossil fuels.
Last, but not least, we have Wind Power Plants.
Wind Power Plants, or Wind Turbines,
get their energy from the wind
by connecting a generator to the blades
The rotational movement of the blades
caused by the wind, powers a generator.
Like solar power, they are a clean source of energy,
but require much more hardware to work effectively,
and with many more parts,
are more likely to fail.
Like many things nowadays,
Power Plants are controlled using a PLC,
Programmable Logic Controller,
or DCS, Distributed Control System.
The ability for condition monitoring of all the plant items
enables us to determine what is running efficiently,
and what could fail.
This enables us to proactively maintain plant equipment before it fails,
rather than reactively fixing broken equipment.
From within a control room, a full SCADA,
or a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition system
can monitor and control temperatures,
speeds of pumps and motors and open and close valves.
This can be especially useful in the case of fossil fuel burning plants
where the precise control of system devices
can increase the plant availability.
Availability is the amount of time that the plant is able to produce electricity
over a certain period of time,
divided by the amount of the time in the period,
which is often a Key Performance Indicator, or KPI.
This also ensures the most efficient use of the plant
which maximizes power generation.
By monitoring the demand,
and trending at which times of the day the demand is highest,
plants can adjust the speed of pumps automatically
according to the time of the day,
something that wouldn’t be possible without the use of an automation control system.
That’s it for this video!
I hope you enjoyed learning about the different types of Power Plants,
and how we use automation to make them more efficient.
Want to learn PLC programming in an easy to understand format
and take your career to the next level?
Head on over to realpars.com