EXPERIMENT NO- 03
TO STUDY ABOUT ECONOMICS OF POWER GENERATION SYSTEM
AIM: To study about economics of power generation system.
THEORY:
As we know that for operating any power plant we make an economic calculation to run effectively that power
plant for the specific period of time & for that we need have to consider its main liabilities like its initial cost,
operational cost, & other factors which helpful us to run the plant effectively within all aspects. The load
demand on a power system is governed by the consumers and for a system supplying industrial and domestic
consumers, it varies within wide limits. This variation of load can be considered as daily, weekly, monthly or
yearly. These curves are for a day and for a year and these show the load demanded by the consumers at any
particular time. Such load curves are termed as “Chronological load Curves”. If the ordinates of the
chronological load curves are arranged in the descending order of magnitude with the highest ordinates on
left, a new type of load curve known as “load duration curve” is obtained.
a) Daily load curve and b) Yearly load curve
Load Curves: The curve showing the variation of load on the power station with respect to with respect to time
is known as a load curve. The load on a power station is never constant; it varies from time to time. These load
variations during the whole day (i.e., 24 hours) are recorded half-hourly or hourly and are plotted against time
on the graph. The curve thus obtained is known as daily load curve as it shows the variations of load w.r.t. the
time during the day. The figure below shows a typical daily load curve of a power station. It is clear that load
on the power station is varying, being maximum at 6 P.M. in this case. It may be seen that load curve indicates
at a glance the general character of the load that is being imposed on the plant. Such a clear representation
cannot be obtained from tabulated figures. The monthly load curve can be obtained from the daily load curves
of that month. For this purpose, average values of power over a month at different times of the day are
calculated and then plotted on the graph. The monthly load curve is generally used to fix the rates of energy.
The yearly load curve is obtained by considering the monthly load curves of that particular year. The yearly
load curve is generally used to determine the annual load factor.
