Talk:Power station

From Academic Kids

Is there some diffrenece in meaning between power plant and power station?

To the best of my knowledge, there isn't. --Smack 22:42, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Please don't remove the apparently duplicate mentions of solar energy from this article. Electricity can be generated from sunlight using the photoelectric effect (solar panels), or by just focusing a bunch of light at a central point to create heat. Smack 22:42, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fixes

Generators found in power stations don't have cranks. Cooling towers give off waste heat due to the inefficiency of heat engines - "steam" is ambiguous in this context because the water vapor emitted by a cooling tower has nothing to do with the working fluid in the plant. Some plants use river water for the condensors. This article needs more work! --Wtshymanski 23:20, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It occurs to me that photoelectric and fuel-cell power stations don't have rotating generators. These are a little uncommon.--Wtshymanski 22:26, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Energy Center vs Older terms (Power Plant, Power Station, Steam Electric Station, etc.)

For thirty plus years the trend in the utility industry is to name / rename their electric generating stations with the ending "Energy Center" in recognition that these assets do not make power but convert a supply source of (mostly chemical, fission, potential, kinetic, thermal, light, wave, or tidal) energy into electric energy.

Energy is defined as the ability (capacity) to do work.

Power is the (time-)rate at which work is done.

Electricity has the capacity to perform work for a period of time, as determined by the user.

The utility can charge for total flow (KWH) of electricity during a period and for the peak flow of electricity (KW) during that period if the proper metering is in place to record the peak usage and if the delivery contract allows for this option.

This topic should be redirected to Energy Center or Energy Station or Energy Conversion Plant.

Can you direct me to a reference that uses "Energy Center" as a preferred term for what I would call a "power plant" or, better, a "generating station" ? Google shows nearly 6 million hits for "power plant" and only 500,000 for "energy center" - and the few Web references I checked seem to be for educational institutions or visitor centers, not for power plants. I don't think this topic should be redirected to a term that I don't see used at all for the same subject. I also have a prejudice against empty neologisms for things that have always had perfectly reasonable names. --Wtshymanski 07:49, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think that changing the article is premature because not all utilities are using this convention on their new power plants, yet. Calpine has named a bunch of its new power plants in California with the "energy center" ending, but some of them carry different endings such as "cogeneration" and "project". Also, none of the new plants built by other companies, at least in California, have the ending of "energy center" (according to the California Energy Commission, but they may not use the same names as the companies use, though). I suggest that "energy center" be added to the alternative names instead.

I encourage you (the writer of the above) to get a Wikeipedia user ID - I've looked at the edits you've been making and they look like solid contributions on some of my favorite topics. I dislike the "Energy Center" designation but I think Wikipedia must call these plants what their owners call them - so we may wind up some day with an article called [[New Age Crystal Politically Correct Tree Hugger Energy Center {power station)]] or the like. --Wtshymanski 15:14, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)