Page - 42 - in Our Car as Power Plant

42 Next to this merit order there is a system that can react very fast (seconds), for example when a power plant fails to operate because of an accident. Therefore all power plants do not operate at their maximum capacity, but slightly below maximum. If there is a sudden disruption in demand or production, these plants will react and reach their maximum capacity very fast. This system is called spinning reserve. We can recognise what type of power plant it is by looking to the load factor of the power plant. The load factor is the amount of electricity produced in a year divided by the maximum capacity of that power plant. The load factor has an obvious maximum of 8,760 hours. In that case the power plant runs at its maximum capacity for every hour of the year. From the tables with the electricity production capacity and the electricity generation worldwide for 2010 we can easily calculate the load factors. For nuclear plants in 2010 the load factor was near to 7,000 hours (6,880 hours exactly) which indeed indicates that nuclear plants are base-load plants. For the fossil-fi red power plants, coal, gas and oil fi red, the average load factor is near to 4,000 hours (3,870). This is a mix of base-load coal fi red power plants, intermediate-load plants and peak-load gas-fi red plants.