The capacity factor of a power plant is the amount of electricity that it produces over a period of time, divided by the amount of electricity it could have produced if it had run at full power over that time period. Capacity factors vary greatly depending on the type of fuel that is used and the design of the plant. Capacity factor should not be confused with availability factor. A power station (also power plant) is a facility for the generation of electric power. ... Lightning strikes during a night-time thunderstorm. ... Fuel is a material with one type of energy which can be transformed into another usable energy. ...

There are two main reasons why a plant would not have a capacity factor of 100%. The first reason is equipment that is out of service, either due to failures or routine maintenance. This accounts for most of the unused capacity of baseload power plants. Baseload plants have the lowest costs per unit of electricity because they are designed for maximum efficiency and are operated continuously at high output. Geothermal plants, nuclear plants, coal plant and bioenergy plants that burn solid material are almost always operated as baseload plants. Thermally active area, New Zealand. ... A nuclear power station. ... Mohave Generating Station, a 1,580 MW coal power plant near Laughlin, Nevada A fossil fuel power plant is an energy conversion center that combusts fossil fuels to produce electricity, designed on a large scale for continuous operation. ...

The second reason that a plant has a capacity factor lower than 100% it that output is curtailed because the electricity is not needed or because the price of electricity is too low to make production economical. This accounts for most of the unused capacity of peaking power plants. Peaking plants may operate only a few hours per year or up to a several hours per day. Their electricity is relatively expensive. It is uneconomical, even wasteful, to make a peaking power plant as efficient as a baseload plant because they do not operate enough to pay for the extra equipment cost, and perhaps not enough to offset the embodied energy of the additional components. Peaking power plants (also known as Peaker Plants) are power plants that generally run only when there is a high demand, known as peak demand, for electricity. ... There appear to be a number of different understandings of the term embodied energy. ...

Intermediate power plants, also called load-following power plants, are in between these extremes in terms of capacity factor, efficiency and cost per unit of electricity. They produce most of their electricity during the day, when prices and demand are highest. However, the demand and price of electricity is far lower during the night and intermediate plants shutdown or reduce their output to low levels overnight.

When it comes to solar power, wind power and hydroelectricity, there is a third reason for unused capacity. The plant may be capable of producing electricity, but its fuel, wind, sunlight or water, may not be available. A hydroelectric plant's production may also be affected by requirements to keep the water level from getting too high or low and to provide water for fish downstream. However, solar, wind and hydroelectric plants do have high availability factors, so when they have fuel available, they are almost always able to use it. Solar power describes a number of methods of harnessing energy from the light of the sun. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Hydraulic turbine and electrical generator. ... Wind is the roughly horizontal movement of air (as opposed to an air current) caused by uneven heating of the Earths surface. ... Prism splitting light Sunlight in the broad sense is the total spectrum of electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun. ... Water (from the Old English waeter; c. ... Atlantic herring, Clupea harengus: one of the most abundant species of fish in the world. ...