Show Us Your Power Plants!

[joshriddle 29]

The title explains it all, what does your power plant look like? Here is mine, sorry about the industry that got caught there,

I actually consider the industry there part of it.

[JN_Skyraider 3]

 I really like the look of it, however lung cancer must be the scourge of your health care industry

[froelich131 13]

Hmm, I think this is a "Show us (insert something to show)" thread that I can't contribute too, i can try looking through my old old files, but it may take awhile

I remember having a very nice Hydro powerplant, that was very nicely built and stuff..

But i deleted it or something..

Anyways your powerplant is pretty darn good lookin'

~Joey

[blade2k5 1,523]

Here's the only power plant I use [in top half of pic]

[joshriddle 29]

Originally posted by: SimDude350

 I really like the look of it, however lung cancer must be the scourge of your health care industry quote>

City is trying to pass a proposal to destroy those and build a bigger one.

[§haÅ--Ñ€ §hÅŽo 370]

Shayden doesn't accept Oil pollution. We only use wind mills, solor panels, or hydro plants due to the harmless effects on the enviorment.

[CIUU96 6]

This is my recent huge nuclear power plant project, consisting of 9 reactors, 3 water pumps and 2 power transmitting buildings. It also has required safety gates and fences and of course parking places for workers too. It has been built on one small city tile.

It is accessible from 2 road entrances which are the HNRF route from Sinijärvi, mainly for maintainance crews and few workers and the Highway 6 HNRF ramp, what is the main entrance, most of the workers and all guests (like goverment officials) enter from here.

Pictures:

Whole complex. Click for bigger picture.

Pumps, 1 of the smaller reactors and the power transmitting building  (no bigger picture available)

Main entrance and some parking lots. (no bigger picture)

This is my first contribution to Show Us Your... threads, when i found this thread i thought that at last i had something to show

EDIT: Just for clarification, i don't really like nuclear fission plants either in simcity or in real life but now i decided that i'd make one huge reactor complex just because it would look cool and also that i could use some custom content i had downloaded (mainly the power plants and the security fences)

[joshriddle 29]

I planon doing a project just like yours. I am needing it to power at least 5 large city tiles.

[brenn21 86]

Power Plant for my region... it's small only about 20K now

[joshriddle 29]

Impressive Brenn! I am going to have to get to work on my PP project. I will show it to you when it is finished.

[gtribe 0]

Not pretty, but functional.

[heitomat 156]

Interesting thread, and great pictures. Yours look great, CIUU96!

After all, power plants are vital to any region. About time they got their own thread. 

[nathanthemayor 1,262]

From my CJ:

This is a backup power facility incase the main facility(Can't provide a pic-sorry) in Capital District has problems such as overloading and accidential shutdown. The source of power is basiclly where water is combined by extreme pressure and generates 5x electricity than today's power plants.  Any access power not used is stored in case a blackout or another bad situation happens.(Sorry about the menu and power buttems)

[joshriddle 29]

gtribe: You must have a pretty big region to have to use that many power plants. I'd bet your pollution is in the red.

The red ground suits it.

Oh and are those streets going through the center really necessary?

nathanthemayor: Looks like IHT, but I wouldn't mind stealing your demand. I could use it...

I'll post more when I can.

[heitomat 156]

A little contrubution of my own: The Norwick Hydroelectric Dam.

 

The dam seen from the back:

And finally, just to finish in style, a shot of the river floating away from the bottom of the dam:

Hope you like it. 

[Nardo69 51]

@heitomat: The setup is lamost nice.

Almoste because ...

The formula for the output if a water turbine is : W = n * Q * H * y

with W = Output in kW

n = efficiency of the turbine

Q = Water flow in m°3 / s

y = specific density of water = 1000 kg/m^3

with y and n constant the output depends on the flow rate and the height, more exactly on the product of flow rate and height difference. 

So with your setup of that power plant and the waterfall you are wasting appr. 75 % of the possible output! 

Better would have been the other dam from Pegasus. That would also correspond to your rather small creek, because with a big height difference even a small steady flow rate can produce quite some electricity. 

(Please don't ask for imperial units. I hate them. As a civilized person I ONLY use metric units!)

[heitomat 156]

@Nardo69:

 I love your realistic approach to everything. Really, I do. Basically, what you're saying is that the specific dam I've used would be much more efficient if placed where the water flow is bigger. Where in my stream should the dam be placed? On the lower waterfall (where the water flow possibly at least would be more rapid)? Or are you saying that this specific type of dam is not suitable for these conditions at all?

I've got the other PEG dam as well, but I think this small one look way better.. 

[Nardo69 51]

That new PP does look better. I went crazy went PEG released it because it is the first (and by now only) Low Pressure Water Power Plant. 

Low Pressure Water Power Plants (LPWPP) are installed in rivers - that means high(er) flow rate and low(er) Height difference. classic (and big one) is the Staustufe Iffezheim on the Rhine between France and Germany (German Wiki, their own website). As you can see on the picture of the second link the height difference is small but the Rhine provides a large flow rate so the overall (coonstant!) output is rather high. 

LPWPPs usually aren't economically to use in small creeks like yours. Not only the heigh difference is rather ineffective for the type of turbines uses in LPWPPs the flow rate of these creek is too inconstant for a constant Output.

That's why you should use a High Pressure Water Power Plant (HPWPP) in this setup. As you remember the Output depends on the product of flow rate and height difference. The bigger the height difference the smaller the required flow rate for a given output. In addition to this the ponded water in front of the dam (always seen in the direction of the water flow!) stabilizes the flow rate as it is a reservoir. 

When I wrote n is constant I wasn't completely right. Actually it is a parabolic curve dependent on the flow rate of the tubine itself. Francis Turbines are rather tolerant to variable flow rates but have a "low" efficiency (n = 0,75-0,82) whereas Straight-Flow Turbines (only in LPWPP!) require a constant flow rate as they are only efficient in a small range - however with n>0,9!

Small creeks have big differences inflow rate during the seasons and may even fall dry. That's why you need to built a reservoir for them that should contain a week / a month / three months / half a year / a year of water flow in order to guarantee a permanent output of the power plant. 

[heitomat 156]

Interesting reading, this. I've never actually thought of the fact that different setups use different kinds of turbines (LPWPP vs. HPWPP). Anyway, my inspiration for the Norwick Dam was the dam seen at the very beginning of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tElOEJUTpvM. It's filmed in Bergsdalen, Norway, a 1 hour drive from Bergen (where I live).

Btw, the dam actually has a reservoir, but it isn't seen properly in my pictures.

[gtribe 0]

Originally posted by: joshriddle

gtribe: You must have a pretty big region to have to use that many power plants. I'd bet your pollution is in the red.

The red ground suits it.

quote>

Not too big yet, about 600k.  I'm just trying out a region by dividing wealth and zone types, so that is the only power for the whole region.  I started a thread in here but it got moved over into General Discussion.  Pollution is all red for sure

Originally posted by: joshriddle

Oh and are those streets going through the center really necessary?

quote>

Good question.  I'm not sure if power plants require streets or not.  I figured they would, so I just built them back to back with the roads parallel to make it easy.  I assume the waste to energy plants require it though, for the garbage trucks.

[Nardo69 51]

@heitomat: Unfortunately I am in Turkey right at the moment where they blocked youtube for some stupid nationalistic *censored*. But if there is something like a waterfall close to a PP on a picture it may be the overflow structure at work during high water. 

Anyway I went back a bit in my CJ as I did build some water power plants since I came back form the last hiatus. 

Nr. 1 is a LPWPP in a rather typical environment to be found in Update 4 on page 31: 

Nr. 2 is another LPWPP but this time in a bigger river with a lock as the river is a water way, too, to be found on the same page:

 

Nr. 3 finally is a HPWPP, well kind of. Reservoir & everything is way too small (it's just a small map!) but you may get the idea. You'll find the complete Update on page 35 in my CJ: 

[quicksilver991 37]

Here is a coal power plant in a city I'm currently working on. Adjacent to oil storage tanks and the harbor.

[quicksilver991 37]

I'm guessing it's okay to double post since there hasn't been any activity in a  while and I'm showing new images.

A huge coal power complex using the same basic lot as the one above.

There are the generators, unloading cranes, and transformers.

I hope this sparks some activity on this thread, as power plants can be made to look very cool.

[nathanthemayor 1,262]

This dam is the famous one from Dante's Peak, and now in the recreation CJ of mine. In the movie volanic lahars breached it and killed Paul Drewfus

[Timmystwin 201]

I usually use the sushi power lots i made

[mitsos 12,854]

This is the largest nuclear power plant in Dimland and probably in the simworld. its power is 9200 MW.

[antsel 841]

Wow, awesome work on the powerplants.

CIUU96, that's a MASSIVE nuclear facility! Looks awesome!

The00guvna, I love that coal plant, and the use of all those transformers and the coal shipping docks. Where did you get the powerplant lots?

Mitsos, very impressive faciliity!

Great work everyone!

[quicksilver991 37]

@ selles: They are called the clean coal power plants and can be found here.

@ mitsos: That looks very nice, but I would suggest gettting rid of those Maxis candystripe power pylons and replace it with some kind of other power pylon set, like PEG's which just replaces those strange textures with a metallic gray.

[antsel 841]

Thanks guvna!

[mitsos 12,854]

thank you guys. i ll try to replace it with other pylons as you suggested.i made this long time ago.