Base load power plant

About: Base load power plant is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6121 publications have been published within this topic receiving 96788 citations.

Status of Geothermal Exploration in Kenya and Future Plans for Its Development

Abstract: Kenya is endowed with vast geothermal potential along the world famous East African Rift valley that transects the country from north to south. Exploration reveals that geothermal potential exceeds 4,000 MWe and is capable of meeting all of Kenyas electricity needs over the next 20 years. Out of this potential, only 130 MWe is currently generated at the Greater Olkaria geothermal field. KenGen in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy of the Government of Kenya has undertaken detailed surface studies of most of the prospects in the Kenya rift, which comprises Suswa, Longonot, Olkaria, Eburru, Menengai, Lakes Bogoria and Baringo, Korosi and Paka volcanic fields. The Least Cost Power Development Plan (2008-2028) prepared by the Government of Kenya indicates that geothermal plants have the lowest unit cost and therefore suitable for base load and thus, recommended for additional expansion. Electric power demand in Kenya currently stands at over 8% annually. In order to meet the anticipated growth in demand, The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) has embarked on an ambitious generation expansion plan to install additional 1,260 MW of electric power by 2018 from geothermal sources. The planned geothermal developments require over 300 production and 60 re-injection wells to be drilled in the next ten (10) years and about 10 large power stations of about 140 MWe each to be built at a total cost of over US$ 5 billion inclusive of wells and steam gathering system. Kenya Electricity Generating Company Limited (KenGen) is a public company under the Ministry of Energy of Kenya and is listed in the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The Government owns 70% of the Company while the public owns the remaining 30%. The Company currently has an installed electric plant capacity of 1005 MWe, which comprises a mix of hydro, geothermal, thermal, wind, gas turbines and diesel power generators. KenGen currently produces about 80% of the total interconnected power supply in Kenya. Kenya has a demand growth of 8%. The growth is driven by increased consumption from existing customers of 5% and new customers account for the 3%. However, installed capacity has not increased to match the demand growth thus emergency power has been procured to satisfy peak demand. The Least Cost Power Development Plan (2008-2028) prepared by the Government of Kenya indicates that geothermal plants have the lowest unit cost and therefore suitable for base load and thus, recommended for additional expansion.

Use of Smart Loads for Power Quality Improvement

Abstract: Electric spring (ES) was originally proposed as a distributed demand-side management technology for making noncritical loads adaptive to the availability of intermittent renewable power generation. The second generation of ES, fed with batteries (ES-2) and associated with a noncritical load, can form a new kind of combined smart load and distributed energy storage technology for smart grids. With its four-quadrant operation, ES-2 is able to offer ancillary grid services in addition to its major functions of voltage and frequency regulation. This paper presents the operating principles and the input current control of ES-2 for power quality improvement such as power factor correction and harmonics reduction. The operating principles and the proposed input current control have been verified with the experimental results obtained from a small-scale power grid. Another weak single-phase power system fed by intermittent wind power is set up to prove the combined operation of ES-2 for power quality improvement and ES-1 (ES with capacitor storage) for voltage stabilization. The experimental results show that ES-2 with input current control can carry out power quality improvement as its ancillary function.

Multi-period integrated natural gas and electric power system probabilistic optimal power flow incorporating power-to-gas units

Abstract: The increasing adoption of gas-fired power plants directly strengthens the coupling between electric power and natural gas systems. Current industrial practice in optimal power flow for electric power systems has not taken the security constraints of gas systems into consideration, resulting in an overly-optimistic solution. Meanwhile, the operation of electric power and natural gas systems is coupled over multiple periods because of the ramp rate limits of power generators and the slow dynamical characteristics of gas systems. Based on these motivations, we propose a multi-period integrated natural gas and electric power system probabilistic optimal power flow (M-GEPOPF) model, which includes dynamic gas flow models. To address the uncertainties originating from wind power and load forecasting, a probabilistic optimal power flow (POPF) calculation based on a three-point estimate method (3PEM) is adopted. Moreover, power-to-gas (PtG) units are employed to avoid wind power curtailment and enable flexible bi-directional energy flows between the coupled energy systems. An integrated IEEE RTS 24-bus electric power system and the Belgian 20-node natural gas system are employed as a test case to verify the applicability of the proposed M-GEPOPF model, and to demonstrate the potential economic benefits of PtG units.