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I'm interested in finding out the order of magnitude of the thermal energy stored in steam in a utility scale power station (say, 300 MW - 3 GW). There are several ways of posing the problem, but I guess what I mean is:

  • How many seconds/minutes worth of energy is stored in the steam? If you turn off / divert the incoming source of heat (nuclear, natural gas, coal, etc.) for 1 second, and the plant is operating at rated capacity, during that 1 second, what percentage of the steam energy is converted into kinetic energy for the turbines?

I would guess that it's in the minutes range, and not hours or seconds, but that's just a wild guess and I can't figure out how to look this information up from publicly available information.

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  • $\begingroup$ 300 MW / 60min/hr / 60 sec/min. $\endgroup$
    – StainlessSteelRat
    Commented Aug 18 at 23:52
  • $\begingroup$ the boiler does not cool off in 1 second $\endgroup$
    – jsotola
    Commented Aug 19 at 0:37
  • $\begingroup$ I don't understand either comment. I'm trying to understand the energy stored in the steam in terms of how many seconds or minutes worth of energy is being converted. This concept has a name when the kinetic energy of the generators downstream are concerned: the inertia constant H, and it's typically in the 2-7 second range. $\endgroup$
    – Jason S
    Commented Aug 20 at 17:39

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