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Power stations

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Architecture, Traveling, Technology and industry

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. Originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933, it was officially renamed Hoover Dam, for President Herbert Hoover, by a joint resolution of Congress in 1947.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Three Gorges Dam

The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, China. The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22,500 MW). In 2014, the dam generated 98.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) and had the world record, but was surpassed by the Itaipú Dam, which set the new world record in 2016, producing 103.1 TWh.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Wind turbine

A wind turbine is a device that converts the wind's kinetic energy into electrical energy.

Technology and industry

Nuclear power station

A nuclear power plant or nuclear power station is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As it is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces electricity. As of 23 April 2014, the IAEA report there are 449 nuclear power reactors in operation operating in 31 countries.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Thermal power station

A thermal power station is a power station in which heat energy is converted to electric power. In most of the places in the world the turbine is steam-driven. Water is heated, turns into steam and spins a steam turbine which drives an electrical generator. After it passes through the turbine, the steam is condensed in a condenser and recycled to where it was heated; this is known as a Rankine cycle. The greatest variation in the design of thermal power stations is due to the different heat sources; fossil fuel dominates here, although nuclear heat energy and solar heat energy are also used. Some prefer to use the term energy center because such facilities convert forms of heat energy into electrical energy. Certain thermal power stations are also designed to produce heat energy for industrial purposes, or district heating, or desalination of water, in addition to generating electrical power.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Nine Elms, Battersea, an inner-city district of South West London. It comprises two individual power stations, built in two stages in the form of a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built in the 1930s, with Battersea B Power Station to the east in the 1950s. The two stations were built to a nearly identical design, providing the long-recognised four-chimney layout. The station ceased generating electricity in 1983, but over the past 50 years it has become one of the best known landmarks in London and is Grade II* listed. The station's celebrity owes much to numerous popular culture references, which include the cover art of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals and its appearance in the 1965 Beatles' film Help!

Technology and industry

Pumped-storage power station

Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of gravitational potential energy of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost surplus off-peak electric power is typically used to run the pumps. During periods of high electrical demand, the stored water is released through turbines to produce electric power. Although the losses of the pumping process makes the plant a net consumer of energy overall, the system increases revenue by selling more electricity during periods of peak demand, when electricity prices are highest.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert. It is located at the base of Clark Mountain in California, across the state line from Primm, Nevada. The plant has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts (MW). It deploys 173,500 heliostats, each with two mirrors focusing solar energy on boilers located on three centralized solar power towers. The first unit of the system was connected to the electrical grid in September 2013 for an initial synchronisation test. The facility formally opened on February 13, 2014. In 2014, it was the world's largest solar thermal power station.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Polavaram Project

Polavaram Project, also known as the Indira Sagar Project, is an underconstruction multi-purpose irrigation project on the Godavari River in the West Godavari District and East Godavari District in Andhra Pradesh. The project has been accorded national project status by the Union Government of India and will be the last to be accorded the status. Its reservoir spreads into parts of Chhattisgarh and Odisha States also.

Technology and industry

Combined cycle power station

In electric power generation a combined cycle power plant is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy to drive electrical generators. The principle is that after completing its cycle, the temperature of the working fluid in the system is still high enough that a second subsequent heat engine extracts energy from the heat that the first engine produced. By generating electricity from multiple streams of work, the overall net efficiency of the system may be increased by 50–60%. That is, from an overall efficiency of say 34%, to possibly an overall efficiency of 62%, 84% of theoretical efficiency

Architecture, Technology and industry

Wind farm

A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other purposes. A wind farm can also be located offshore.

Technology and industry

Fossil-fuel power station

A fossil fuel power station is a power station which burns a fossil fuel such as coal, natural gas, or petroleum to produce electricity. Central station fossil fuel power plants are designed on a large scale for continuous operation. In many countries, such plants provide most of the electrical energy used. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then operates an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating internal combustion engine. All plants use the energy extracted from expanding gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Glen Canyon Dam

Glen Canyon Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam on the Colorado River in northern Arizona, United States, near the town of Page. The 710-foot (220 m) high dam was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) from 1956 to 1966 and forms Lake Powell, one of the largest man-made reservoirs in the U.S. with a capacity of 27 million acre feet (33 km3). The dam is named for Glen Canyon, a series of deep sandstone gorges now flooded by the reservoir; Lake Powell is named for John Wesley Powell, who in 1869 led the first expedition to traverse the Colorado's Grand Canyon by boat.

Architecture, Technology and industry

Itaipu Binacional

The Itaipu Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. The construction of the dam was first contested by Argentina, but the negotiations and resolution of the dispute ended up setting the basis for Argentine–Brazilian integration later on.

Technology and industry

CANDU reactor

The CANDU, for Canada Deuterium Uranium, is a Canadian pressurized heavy-water reactor design used to generate electric power. The acronym refers to its deuterium oxide moderator and its use of uranium fuel. CANDU reactors were first developed in the late 1950s and 1960s by a partnership between Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, Canadian General Electric, and other companies.