Megawatt in the context of Work (physics)

A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an extensive area. Wind farms can be either onshore or offshore.

Many of the largest operational onshore wind farms are located in China, India, and the United States. For example, the largest wind farm in the world, Gansu Wind Farm in China had a capacity of over 6,000 MW by 2012, with a goal of 20,000 MW by 2020. As of December 2020, the 1218 MW Hornsea Wind Farm in the UK is the largest offshore wind farm in the world. Individual wind turbine designs continue to increase in power, resulting in fewer turbines being needed for the same total output.

A rooftop solar power system, or rooftop PV system, is a photovoltaic (PV) system that has its electricity-generating solar panels mounted on the rooftop of a residential or commercial building or structure. The various components of such a system include photovoltaic modules, mounting systems, cables, solar inverters battery storage systems, charge controllers, monitoring systems, racking and mounting systems, energy management systems, net metering systems, disconnect switches, grounding equipment, protective devices, combiner boxes, weatherproof enclosures and other electrical accessories.

Rooftop mounted systems are small compared to utility-scale solar ground-mounted photovoltaic power stations with capacities in the megawatt range, hence being a form of distributed generation. A comprehensive life cycle analysis study showed that rooftop solar is better for the environment than utility-scale solar. Most rooftop PV stations are Grid-connected photovoltaic power systems. Rooftop PV systems on residential buildings typically feature a capacity of about 5–20 kilowatts (kW), while those mounted on commercial buildings often reach 100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt (MW). Very large roofs can house industrial scale PV systems in the range of 1–10 MW.

The Three Gorges Dam, officially known as Yangtze River Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River near Sandouping in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, central China, downstream of the Three Gorges. The world's largest power station by installed capacity (22,500 MW), the Three Gorges Dam generates 95±20 TWh of electricity per year on average, depending on the amount of precipitation in the river basin. After the monsoons of 2020, the dam produced nearly 112 TWh in a year, breaking the record of 103 TWh set by the Itaipu Dam in 2016.

The dam's body, 185 meters high and 2,309 meters wide, was completed in 2006. The power plant became fully operational in 2012, when the last of the 32 main water turbines in the underground plant began production. The last major component of the project, the ship lift, was completed in 2015.

A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station that burns fossil fuel, such as coal, oil, or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machines that convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then powers an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating gas engine. All plants use the energy extracted from the expansion of a hot gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have their efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.

Fossil fuel power stations provide most of the electrical energy used in the world. Some fossil-fired power stations are designed for continuous operation as baseload power plants, while others are used as peaker plants. However, starting from the 2010s, in many countries plants designed for baseload supply are being operated as dispatchable generation to balance increasing generation by variable renewable energy.

This article lists the largest offshore wind farms that are currently operational rated by nameplate capacity. It also lists the largest offshore wind farms currently under construction, the largest proposed offshore wind farms, and offshore wind farms with notability other than size.

As of 2022, Hornsea 2 in the United Kingdom is the largest offshore wind farm in the world at 1,386 MW.

Banjë Hydro Power Plant is a large hydroelectricity plant on the river Devoll situated near the village of Banjë, Albania. It was built by Devoll Hydropower, an Albanian company owned by Norwegian power company Statkraft. The project consists of a large power plant with a nominal capacity of 70 MW and an average annual production of 242 GWh. The dam is 900 metres long, 370 metres wide and 80 metres high. The reservoir was planned to have a surface area of 14 km, and a storage capacity of about 400 million m. It was completed in 2016.

This article lists the largest power stations in the world, the ten overall and the five of each type, in terms of installed electrical capacity. Non-renewable power stations are those that run on coal, fuel oils, nuclear fuel, natural gas, oil shale and peat, while renewable power stations run on fuel sources such as biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, and wind. Only the most significant fuel source is listed for power stations that run on multiple sources.

As of 2025, the largest power generating facility ever built is the Three Gorges Dam in China, completed in 2012. The facility generates power by utilizing 32 Francis turbines for a total capacity of 22,500 MW. The eight largest power stations are also hydroelectric dams, beginning with Baihetan Dam, at 16,000 MW, also in China. The largest natural gas plant is Jebel Ali, UAE (8,695 MW) and the largest coal plant is Tuoketuo, China (6,720 MW). The largest nuclear plant is Kori, South Korea (7,489 MW) following the 2011 suspension of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, Japan (7,965 MW).

A radial turbine is a turbine in which the flow of the working fluid is radial to the shaft. The difference between axial and radial turbines consists in the way the fluid flows through the components (compressor and turbine). Whereas for an axial turbine the rotor is 'impacted' by the fluid flow, for a radial turbine, the flow is smoothly oriented perpendicular to the rotation axis, and it drives the turbine in the same way water drives a watermill. The result is less mechanical stress (and less thermal stress, in case of hot working fluids) which enables a radial turbine to be simpler, more robust, and more efficient (in a similar power range) when compared to axial turbines. When it comes to high power ranges (above 5 MW) the radial turbine is no longer competitive (due to its heavy and expensive rotor) and the efficiency becomes similar to that of the axial turbines.

Athlone Power Station was a coal-fired power station in Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa. The site stopped generating power in 2003 and was decommissioned. However, in 2021 plans were announced to re-use the site.

Athlone Power Station was situated on the N2 freeway into the city, consisted of a large brick generation building, two 99m brick chimneys, and two cooling towers, fed by reclaimed water from a nearby sewage plant. It was commissioned in 1962 with 6 turbines with a nominal capacity of 180 megawatts, and operated by the City of Cape Town. Between 1985 and 1994 the station was held on standby, but it resumed generating in 1995 with a reduced capacity of 120 MW. Between 1995 and 2003 it was used to generate power during peak demand periods or power failures of the national grid. By 2003, significant investment was required due to the age of the power station, so generation ended.

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a solar thermal power project with an installed capacity of 110 megawatt (MW) and 1.1 gigawatt-hours of energy storage located near Tonopah, about 190 miles (310 km) northwest of Las Vegas. Crescent Dunes is the first commercial concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with a central receiver tower and advanced molten salt energy storage technology at full scale (110 MW), following the experimental Solar Two and Gemasolar in Spain at 50 MW. As of 2023, it is operated by its new owner, Vinci SA, and in a new contract with NV Energy, it now supplies solar energy at night only, drawing on thermal energy stored each day.

Startup energy venture company SolarReserve (created via seed funding), US Renewables Group, and United Technologies were the original owners of Tonopah Solar Energy LLC, the owner and operator of the Crescent Dunes plant. The Crescent Dunes project was subsequently backed by a $737 million in U.S. government loan guarantees and by Tonopah partnering with Cobra Thermosolar Plants, Inc. The overall venture had a projected cost of less than $1 billion. The plant suffered several design, construction and technical problems and, having not produced power since April 2019, its sole customer, NV Energy, subsequently terminated its contract. Bloomberg reported that NV Energy was not allowed to sever its agreement with the plant until after the DoE took over the shuttered plant in August 2019.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant located in the Mojave Desert at the base of Clark Mountain in California, across the state line from Primm, Nevada. It is slated to close in 2026. The facility derives its name from its proximity to Ivanpah, California, which lies within the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County and which derives its name from the Chemehuevi word for "clean water".

The plant has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts (MW). It uses 173,500 heliostats, each with two mirrors focusing solar energy on boilers located on three 459-foot-tall (140 m) solar power towers. The first unit of the system was connected to the electrical grid in September 2013 for an initial synchronization test. The facility formally opened on February 13, 2014. At that time, it was the world's largest solar thermal power station.

Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is a concentrated solar power plant in California, United States. With the combined capacity from three separate locations at 354 megawatt (MW), it was for thirty years the world's largest solar thermal energy generating facility, until the commissioning of the even larger Ivanpah facility in 2014. It was also for thirty years the world's largest solar generating facility of any type of technology, until the commissioning of the photovoltaic Topaz Solar Farm in 2014. It consisted of nine solar power plants in California's Mojave Desert, where insolation is among the best available in the United States.

SEGS I–II (44 MW) were located at Daggett (34°51′45″N 116°49′45″W / 34.86250°N 116.82917°W / 34.86250; -116.82917); they have been replaced with a solar photovoltaic farm.

Khi Solar One (KSO) is a solar power tower solar thermal power plant, located in the Northern Cape Region of South Africa. Khi Solar One is 50 megawatts (MW), and is the first solar tower plant in Africa. It covers an area of 140 hectares (346 acres).

Abengoa claims that Khi Solar One is the first thermal solar tower plant in Africa and the first to achieve 24 hours of operation using only solar energy. This is made possible by reduced electricity demand at night, as the plant's storage system can provide full output for only two hours.

Concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) (also known as concentrating photovoltaics or concentration photovoltaics) is a photovoltaic technology that generates electricity from sunlight. Unlike conventional photovoltaic systems, it uses lenses or curved mirrors to focus sunlight onto small, highly efficient, multi-junction (MJ) solar cells. In addition, CPV systems often use solar trackers and sometimes a cooling system to further increase their efficiency.

Systems using high-concentration photovoltaics (HCPV) possess the highest efficiency of all existing PV technologies, achieving near 40% for production modules and 30% for systems. They enable a smaller photovoltaic array that has the potential to reduce land use, waste heat and material, and balance of system costs. The rate of annual CPV installations peaked in 2012 and has fallen to near zero since 2018 with the faster price drop in crystalline silicon photovoltaics. In 2016, cumulative CPV installations reached 350 megawatts (MW), less than 0.2% of the global installed capacity of 230,000 MW that year.

Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG), or district/decentralized energy, is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system-connected devices referred to as distributed energy resources (DER).

Conventional power stations, such as coal-fired, gas, and nuclear powered plants, as well as hydroelectric dams and large-scale solar power stations, are centralized and often require electric energy to be transmitted over long distances. By contrast, DER systems are decentralized, modular, and more flexible technologies that are located close to the load they serve, albeit having capacities of only 10 megawatts (MW) or less. These systems can comprise multiple generation and storage components; in this instance, they are referred to as hybrid power systems.

The Gezhouba Dam or Gezhouba Water Control Project (Chinese: 长江葛洲坝水利枢纽工程) on the Yangtze River is located in the western suburbs of Yichang, in central China's Hubei province. One of the largest run-of-the-river dams, it sits several kilometers upstream from downtown Yichang, just downstream of the fall of the Huangbo River into the Yangtze. Construction started on December 30, 1970 and ended on December 11, 1988. The dam has a total installed electricity generation capacity of 2,715 MW.

After rushing out of Nanjin Pass (南津关, "South Ford Pass"), the Yangtze River slows down and widens from 300 metres (980 ft) to about 2,200 metres (7,200 ft) at the dam site. Two small islands, Gezhouba and Xiba, divided the river into three channels. There, the Gezhouba Project was built.