If a plants production capacity 100 mega watt , does it mean it produces 100 mega watt in an hour?

Question

what i mean to ask it that the government states that it will install a 400 megawatt plant. Now will that plant produce 400 megawatt in one hour, one day or do they mean a year

Answer 1

*What DR JAM had given is absolutely correct, but i want to add more.
Please read:
A one hundred watt light bulb, for example, is rated to consume one hundred watts of power when turned on. If such a light bulb were on for four hours it would consume a total of 400 watt-hours (Wh) of energy. Watts, therefore, measure instantaneous power while watt-hours measure the total amount of energy consumed over a period of time.

A megawatt (MW) is one million watts and a kilowatt (kW) is one thousand watts. Both terms are commonly used in the power business when describing generation or load consumption. For instance, a 100 MW rated wind farm is capable of producing 100 MW during peak winds, but will produce much less than its rated amount when winds are light. As a result of these varying wind speeds, over the course of a year a wind farm may only average 30 MW of power production. Similarly, a 1,000 MW coal plant may average 750 MW of production over the course of a year because the plant will shut down for maintenance from time-to-time and the plant operates at less than its rated capability when other power plants can produce power less expensively.

The ratio of a power plant's average production to its rated capability is known as capacity factor. In the previous example, the wind farm would have a 30 percent capacity factor (30 MW average production divided by 100 MW rated capability) and the coal plant would have a 75 percent capacity factor (750 MW average divided by 1,000 MW rated capability). Load factor generally, on the other hand, is calculated by dividing the average load by the peak load over a certain period of time. If the residential load at a utility averaged 5,000 MW over the course of a year and the peak load was 10,000 MW, then the residential customers would be said to have a load factor of 50 percent (5,000 MW average divided by 10,000 MW peak).

Knowing the peak and average demand of a power system is critical to proper planning. The power system must be designed to serve the peak load, in this example 10,000 MW. But the actual load will vary. The load might be 10,000 MW at noon, but only 4,000 MW at midnight, when fewer appliances are operating. The capacity or load factor gives utility planners a sense of this variation. A 40 percent load factor would indicate large variations occur in load, while a 90 percent load factor would indicate little variation. Residential homes tend to have low load factors because people are home and using appliances only during certain hours of the day, while certain industrial customer will have very high load factors because they operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Answer 2

The power plant produces 100 MWatts.

You turn on (1) 100 Watt light bulb, and you are using 100 of the total 100 MWatts (forget about the time for now)
You turn on (2) 100 Watt light bulbs, and you are using 200 of the total 100 MWatts.

Now the power company needs to charge you something for using the 200 Watts of power, so they decide to charge you by the hour, so now they need to keep tract of how many hours you leave those lights on, because while you are using those 200 Watts of their power no one else can use them.

So they put in a meter that tracks your use of their Watts, and multiplies it times the number of hours that you used those Watts. Then they send you a great big bill for all the killowats that you used.

So when they say they are putting in a 100 MWatt power plant, it is a measure of the continuous power output.
If you would turn on a 100 MWatt light bulb, you would have to pay for all the power they produced, until you turned the light off.

Answer 3

Plant Capacity 100 MW means that the prime movers which are rotating the generators (Alternators) have capacity or strength to drive or rotate alternators so as to deliver or cater or power upto100 MW.
There is no time element involved in it. Its power. When you multiply by time or add time element, it becomes MWh (Megawatthour) which is energy.

In electrical terms for a three phase alternator

MW=SQRT(3)*Voltage*Current*Power Factor/10^6
where Voltage is in Volts, Current is in Amps and
Power factor is cosine of angle between Voltage and current.


For example if you have capacity to lift 40kg means that your muscles are strong enough to lift 40 kg and not that you would lift 40 kg in one hour. If you try to lift more than 40 kg you may not be able to do it or your muscles would get damaged. Same happens with a power plant. If it is loaded more than its capacity it will not be able to deliver or its system components would fail.

A plant just does not produce just because it has capacity. It produces only to the extent it is loaded. Therefore, power engineers have to control that a plant is not loaded more than its capacity else it may get damaged.

Answer 4

Think electrons.
W=EI and I is flow of electrons
The plant is pushing out a lot of electrons(at an E).
Hold your bucket at the outfall for an hour and you have a lot of watts which you can bunch into megawatts, terawatts, whatever.
And this is what you are charged for, that bucket of electrons from an hour of flow.

Interestingly enough, at one time they didn't know how to charge for electricity until Samuel Insull came along. He, with a little help from his friends, built a gigantic pyramid of electric utilities which collapsed during the depression causing a large number of poor widows and orphans to lose their large investments in the pyramid. This got Senator Harry Truman mad and he sent a US Destroyer to serve a subpoena on Sam who was vacationing in Greece on his yacht. This made Harry. He became Vice President and the rest is history.

Also, Sam founded the Chicago Symphony. Really. he was a great American hero, a great American bastard. And so it goes. Make a great movie.

Answer 5

It means the power plant is capable of continuously producing 100 mega watts of power. In one hour it will produce 100 mega watt-hours of energy. Power is the rate at which energy is produced.

Answer 6

Simply put, Yes it does. Keep in mind that some of the power produced by the plant is used by the plant.

Answer 7

Watt is power ie. capacity to do work and watt-hour is energy (ie quantity of work). One watt output (or absorption) of energy for one hour is 1 watt hour(note hour in the unit). If the plant produces100 mega watt for one hour it is 100 mega watt hour. If it produces 50 mega watts for 2 hours also, it is100 mega watt hour.(energy is product of power and time)

Answer 8

Consider a 75-HP Yamaha outboard engine. If it is working at full power, it is CONTINUOUSLY putting out 75 HP. Of course, you may pull back the throttle to, say, 50 HP. Now, it is CONTINUOUSLY putting out 50 HP.

Same with the 100 MW power station. It has the capacity to put out 100 MW (working at maximum capacity, and not all of that 100 MW is available to consumers).

Answer 9

100MW means 100MJoules/second or 360000MJ/hr. joules is the unit of energy. Watts is the unit for power, which is energy/time or rate.

Answer 10

the total capacity