Abstract
In this chapter, an overview of the major technologies for power production is given. For fossil and biomass plants, steam and gas turbines along with the cor-responding Rankine and Joule cycles are introduced. Also combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs), motor engines and fuel cells are covered as well as combined heat and power (CHP) generation as a technology with high energy efficiency. The section on nuclear energy illustrates the basic physical processes and the technical concepts like the pressurized water reactor as well as the accompanying risks and environmental effects. Among the multiple renewable energy technologies, the focus is on hydro, wind, solar and bioenergy as these are predominantly used across the world. Again the physical and technological basics are covered, including e.g. in the case of wind power the relationship between wind speed and power as well as Betz’s law. The key technical and economic characteristics of the different generation tech-nologies are summarized in a separate section, introducing inter alia the concept of levelized cost of electricity. As the operation of an electricity system requires the combination of different technologies, the chapter concludes by introducing the scheduling problem for electricity generation – starting with the simple sup-ply stack or merit-order model. But also the mathematical formulation as an op-timization problem is covered.
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Notes
- 1.
It should be noted that these are not chemical reactions in a narrow sense. Rather these equations abstract from the chemical equations and just summarize the essential main chemical components.
- 2.
An isothermal process is a type of thermodynamic process in which the temperature of the system remains constant. Analogical, an isobaric process, is a type of thermodynamic process in which the pressure of the system remains constant.
- 3.
The fuel cell efficiency maybe around 50%. However, because of a high temperature, a gas turbine could be connected to a SOFC, thus increasing the plant efficiency beyond 70%.
- 4.
As the nucleon number already shows, 238U has three neutrons more in the atomic nucleus than 235U.
- 5.
Note that c here stands for the speed of light, whereas m is the mass and E is the energy.
- 6.
https://www.iter.org/, accessed 13th May 2022.
- 7.
Light-water reactors use normal water, while heavy-water reactors use heavy water. Heavy water is water that contains essentially deuterium (2H or D, also called heavy hydrogen). In contrast most of the hydrogen in normal water consists of the hydrogen-1 isotope (1H or H, also called protium).
- 8.
The effect of inserting the rods in a steam area is lower compared to inserting them in a water area (Lamarsh and Baratta 2001, p. 147).
- 9.
Be aware that CHP is not limited to conventional energy carriers as also renewable energy carriers, for example biomass, are converted to thermal energy.
- 10.
Note that sometimes also the inverse ratio, the power-to-heat ratio is computed.
- 11.
- 12.
A black start is the process of restoring an electric power station without relying on electricity from the power transmission network to recover from a total or partial shutdown.
- 13.
http://www.grande-dixence.ch, accessed 13th May 2022.
- 14.
In contrast to water turbines, where only one turbine stage is needed as water is nearly incompressible, multiple turbine stages are usually used to harness the expanding gas efficiently for compressible working fluids, such as steam and gas.
- 15.
Efficiency is determined by the ratio of produced electricity and irradiated solar energy on the surface of the plant.
- 16.
Solar cell efficiency is defined as quotient of solar power and solar irradiance.
- 17.
Geothermal attractive areas already provide the required heat temperatures near surface and thus allow for a cheaper power generation than in geothermal less attractive areas. Examples of countries with geothermal attractive conditions are New Zealand, Iceland and Italy.
- 18.
As it has been the case at a plant in Basel: the hot dry rock enhanced geothermal project induced seismicity in Basel and led to a suspension of the project. After the induced seismicity a seismic-hazard evaluation was conducted, resulting in the cancellation of the project in December 2009 (cf. Glanz 2009).
- 19.
Note that these values are changing over the years due to different factors, like volatile fuel prices, technological development, volatile material prices, etc. Especially in the last decades, investments and costs of some renewables significantly decreased due to technological learning and this development may continue.
- 20.
In this context, it is worth noting that land is not depreciable.
- 21.
Levelized costs of electricity are in general calculated on the basis of expenditures. From a stringent terminological perspective, these should correctly be named as levelized expenditures of electricity. However, the term levelized costs of electricity is established in the energy industry, so that it is also used in this textbook.
- 22.
Note that a similar approach may also be used to analyse electricity market equilibria and therefore will be discussed in-depth in Chap. 7.
- 23.
As the pumping cost curve has been transformed with the round-trip-efficiency, a retransformation of this pumping price is necessary by multiplying the price with the round-trip-efficiency of the plant. In consequence, the price at which electricity is pumped is slightly less than pp*.
- 24.
The lack of storability and the limited predictability of demand also imply that some fast-reacting reserves have to be foreseen in system operation, so that the system may adjust to unforeseen disturbances in demand or supply. This issue is neglected here, but will be taken up again in Sect. 5.1.4.2 and in Sect. 10.3.
- 25.
Note that \({w}_{ut}\) may also be viewed as a “momentaneous” capacity factor for unit \(u\) at time \(t\).
- 26.
Cf. Rajan and Takriti (2005).
- 27.
Nonlinearities may be approximated through piecewise linear functions.
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Weber, C., Möst, D., Fichtner, W. (2022). Electricity Generation and Operational Planning. In: Economics of Power Systems. Springer Texts in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97770-2_4
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