Combined Cycle Power Plants: FAQs

DS200NATOG3 circuit board from General Electric.  This board can be part of a combined cycle power plant's control system.
A DS200NATOG3 circuit board. This board can be used as part of a combined cycle power plant’s control system.

In this short blog post we’ll answer some of the most common questions about combined cycle power plants.

What is a combined cycle plant?

Power plants generate electricity by driving a generator rotor through connected turbines. Power plants use different ways to generate the force to turn turbine blades. A mechanical force from wind or water or energy capture from fuels like coal, diesel, natural gas, and uranium changing states turn the blades.

A combined-cycle plant is a kind of thermal power plant. It uses a combination of two cycles of different energy capture. The first cycle uses natural gas combustion, which drives the generator. The heat from this cycle is used to create steam. The steam is used in the second cycle to produce energy via a steam turbine before the steam condenses back into water.

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