Subject : Power Plant Engineering

Topic: Chap 4- Combined Cycles

Difficulty: Medium

5M

The pump storage plants entail the following advantages:

1. There is substantial increase in peak load capacity of the plant at comparatively low capital cost
2. Due to load comparable to rated load on the plant, the operating efficiency of the plant is high.
3. There is an improvement in the load factor of the plant.
4. The energy available during peak load periods is higher than that of during off peak periods so that inspite of losses incurred in pumping there is over-all gain.
5. Load on the hydro-electric plant remains uniform.
6. The hydro-electric plant becomes partly independent of the stream flow conditions.