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Pumped storage plants, like other hydroelectric plants, can respond to load changes within seconds. The most important use for pumped storage has traditionally been to balance baseload powerplants, but they may also be used to abate the fluctuating output of intermittent energy sources. Pumped storage provides a load at times of high ...
However, considering the mass of the source of the photons, e.g., atoms undergoing nuclear fission, brings the specific impulse down to 300 km/s (c/1000) or less; considering the infrastructure for a reactor (some of which also scales with the amount of fuel) reduces the value further. Finally, any energy loss not through radiation that is ...
Centralised energy sources are large power plants that produce huge amounts of electricity to a large number of consumers. Most power plants used in centralised generation are thermal power plants meaning that they use a fuel to heat steam to produce a pressurised gas which in turn spins a turbine and generates electricity. This is the ...
The emergence of renewable energy such as hydro, wind and solar power, which operate without an active, controlled supply of fuel and which come to a standstill when their natural supply of energy ceases, requires a more careful distinction between the availability factor and the capacity factor. By convention, such zero production periods are ...
Load-following power plants can be hydroelectric power plants, diesel and gas engine power plants, combined cycle gas turbine power plants and steam turbine power plants that run on natural gas or heavy fuel oil, although heavy fuel oil plants make up a very small portion of the energy mix. A relatively efficient model of gas turbine that runs ...
The electrodes can be asymmetrically oriented with respect to the source of energy, though. To obtain the natural electricity, experimenters would thrust two metal plates into the ground at a certain distance from each other in the direction of a magnetic meridian, or astronomical meridian. The stronger currents flow from south to north.
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is a metric that attempts to compare the costs of different methods of electricity generation consistently. Though LCOE is often presented as the minimum constant price at which electricity must be sold to break even over the lifetime of the project, such a cost analysis requires assumptions about the value of various non-financial costs (environmental ...
This imparts additional energy to the propellant, so that one can extract more work out of each kilogram of propellant, at the expense of increased power consumption and (usually) higher cost. Also, the thrust levels available from typically used arcjet engines are very low compared with chemical engines.