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Therefore, the heat rate of a 100% efficient plant is simply 1, or 1 kWh/kWh, or 3.6 MJ/kWh, or 3,412 Btu/kWh; To express the efficiency of a generator or power plant as a percentage, invert the value if dimensionless notation or same unit are used. For example: A heat rate value of 5 gives an efficiency factor of 20%.
Efficiency of power plants, world total, 2008. Energy conversion efficiency (η) is the ratio between the useful output of an energy conversion machine and the input, in energy terms. The input, as well as the useful output may be chemical, electric power, mechanical work, light (radiation), or heat. The resulting value, η (eta), ranges ...
For example, a typical gasoline automobile engine operates at around 25% efficiency, and a large coal-fuelled electrical generating plant peaks at about 46%. However, advances in Formula 1 motorsport regulations have pushed teams to develop highly efficient power units which peak around 45–50% thermal efficiency.
If a plant is only needed during the day, for example, even if it operates at full power output from 8 am to 8 pm every day (12 hours) all year long, it would only have a 50% capacity factor. Due to low capacity factors, electricity from peaking power plants is relatively expensive because the limited generation has to cover the plant fixed costs.
If energy output and input are expressed in the same units, efficiency is a dimensionless number. [1] Where it is not customary or convenient to represent input and output energy in the same units, efficiency-like quantities have units associated with them. For example, the heat rate of a fossil fuel power plant may be expressed in BTU per ...
In electrical engineering the load factor is defined as the average load divided by the peak load in a specified time period. [1] It is a measure of the utilization rate, or efficiency of electrical energy usage; a high load factor indicates that load is using the electric system more efficiently, whereas consumers or generators that underutilize the electric distribution will have a low load ...
The number of transfer units (NTU) method is used to calculate the rate of heat transfer in heat exchangers (especially parallel flow, counter current, and cross-flow exchangers) when there is insufficient information to calculate the log mean temperature difference (LMTD). Alternatively, this method is useful for determining the expected heat ...
The power obtainable from a cylinder of fluid with cross-sectional area S and velocity v 1 is =. The reference power for the Betz efficiency calculation is the power in a moving fluid in a cylinder with cross-sectional area S and velocity v 1: