Dr. Conca reports that lately, there have been some great articles on the largest power plants in the world, and China always tops the chart with its Three Gorges Dam Hydroelectric Plant. Of course, the U.S. has some pretty big ones that make it into the top tier. But everyone uses the wrong measure to decide what is the biggest power plant.
The usual measure of what is bigger is the so-called Nameplate installed capacity, which is the maximum power a plant can produce when everything is running perfectly. The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State has a Nameplate capacity of 6,809 MW, the biggest in America.
But the real measure is what the power plant actually produces over the year. The difference between these two measures is what is known as the capacity factor - cf. The cf is equal to what the plant, array or farm produces in kilowatt hours - kWhs - per year divided by what it could produce if it ran at capacity, 24 hours a day, every day for the entire year. BTW, a year has 8,766 hours, and we like to use kWhs for production since that is what shows up in your electric bill at the end of the month.
These large power plants, and the next few dozen, are critical to the lives and livelihoods of 100 million Americans. Out of almost 5,000 power plants in this country, these few large ones provide an overwhelming amount of power to America, and are located in critical areas that support the biggest population centers in the country.
But 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity whatsoever. 2.4 billion people still burn wood and manure as their major source of energy. In many places throughout the world, electricity only occurs for a few hours a day, even in cities of 10 million people.
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