"Are you baseline? Peaker?"
Actually, we're neither. We are a small university power plant that "co-generates" alonside the local utility. We can't make all of our demand most of the time, so we buy some amount continuously. How much we generate is a complicated affair based on how much steam is demanded from the university campus. Our turbine is an extraction/condensing turbine, exhausting 125# steam after the 1'st two stages to supply the heating and "cooling" needs of the campus. Plus right now, the utility has several of their base load units off-line, which causes prices to rise quite a bit.
This forces us to generate enough electricity to get under our "firm." Firm is the amount of electricity we cannot make based on the peak demand of the year minus generation credited to us via what's called an urge test. This means we must generate enough electricity to force our incoming "buy" to less than about 4 MW at this moment.
we are in effect a very small ant in terms of the grid, because we generate such a small amount, and we never export.
Actually though, you could say we are baseloaded. The generator is always in isochronous droop, constant power control. This means that no matter what total system load is doing, combined with the extraction steam flow, the throttle will do whatever they need to do to maintain a constant power. Although operator intervention is required from time to time, because of the changes in steam demand. There is a small range that this works in, and if it's exceeded, pressure will drop on the extraction side.
This load control is actually controlled by measuring the backpressure of the extraction (AKA process steam in some industries).
[This message has been edited by rat4spd (edited 09-18-2005).]
