Equipment, costs electrical

A small but growing photovoltaic industry now exists with worldwide sales between 300 million and 400 million. The United States and Japan account for 75% of worldwide sales, but European firms are increasingly active, with over 17% of the market [9]. Panel prices are about 5 per peak watt. With this capital cost and today s attendant equipment costs, electric power can be generated for between 30 and 40 cents per kilowatt-hour. 

Equipment Costs. Equipment costs include the purchased cost of process and materials handling equipment, storage faciUties, waste treatment equipment, stmctures, and site service faciUties. Installation costs such as insulation, piping, painting and finishing, foundations, process stmctures, instmmentation, and electrical service connections are estimated or factored separately. Actual quoted prices from suppHers are the best data, but these are not usually available when estimates are made. The quick, inexpensive cost estimates are based largely on personal cost files, internal company cost data, or pubUshed cost correlations. 

Economics Power-recoveiy units have no operating costs in essence, the energy is available free. Furthermore, there is no incremental capital cost for energy supply. Incremental installed energy-system costs for a steam-turbine driver and supply system amount to about 800 per kilowatt, and the incremental cost of an electric-motor driver plus supply system is about 80 per kilowatt. By contrast, even the highest-inlet-pressure, largest-flow power-recoveiy machines will seldom have an equipment cost of more than 140 per kilowatt, and costs frequently are as low as 64 per kilowatt. However, at bare driver costs (not including power supply) of 64 to 140 per kilowatt for the power-recovery driver versus about 30 to 80 per Idlowatt for... 

Electric power systems can be thought of as being comprised of three important sectors generation, transmission, and distribution. For most utilities, generation capital equipment costs account for approximately 50 percent of total plant in costs. Generation also accounts for close to 75 percent of total operation and maintenance expense. 

As a general principle, in electrical resistance boilers, the higher the output, the larger and more complex they become, with an increasing number of circuits, fuses, contactors, and other electrical equipment, until a point is reached at which electrode boilers become more practical and cost-effective. (Although in the marketplace there are low voltage electrode boilers available that are designed to directly compete with small, low-cost electrical resistance boilers.)... 

TES-based systems are usually economically justifiable when the annualized capital and operating costs are less than those for primary generating equipment supplying the same service loads and periods. TES is often installed to reduce initial costs of other plant components and operating costs. Lower initial equipment costs are usually obtained when large durations occur between periods of energy demand. Secondary capital costs may also be lower for TES-based systems. For example, the electrical service equipment size can sometimes be reduced when energy demand is lowered. 

Electrical This item consists of transformers, wiring, switching gear, as well as instrumentation and control wiring. The installed costs of the electrical items may be estimated as 20 to 40 percent of the delivered equipment costs or 5 to 10 percent of the fixed capital investment for preliminary estimates. As with piping estimation, the process design must be well along toward completion before detailed electrical takeoffs can be made. 

For the pilot plant, 39% of the equipment costs were for the reactor. Equipment costs are typically one-third to one-half of total construction costs. The proposed facility would require approximately 3350 kWh of energy. At 4 cents/kWh, daily electrical costs would be 134 per day (D120821). 

The LTTA system was assumed to operate for approximately 30 hr per week. No equipment cost alternatives are presented because the full-scale system is the only model available. Consumption rates for electrical, water, and telephone utilities were assumed negligible in terms of overall LTTA system operating costs (D10956I, pp. 26, 27). 

As part of the U.S. DOE Heavy Metals in Contaminated Soils Treatability Project, total cost for the air classifier system was estimated at 1.28 (1995 dollars) per ton of material treated. Equipment costs were estimated at 151,375 and installation costs were estimated at 277,062 for a total capital cost of 378,437 or 0.18 per ton, assuming the system s operating lifetime was 10 years. Parts were estimated at 0.05 per ton, electricity was estimated at 0.05 per ton, and labor was estimated at 1.00 per ton, for a total operating cost of 1.10 per ton. 

As of file early 1990s the hislnrieal importance of coball ill alloys for reducing wear resistance was markedly diminished by the development of Norem alloys, which were derived from stainless steel, particularly the Armco Nitronic 60. admittedly one of the few stainless steels that has excellent wear resistance. This is an outgrowth of research conducted by EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) in an effort to lower equipment costs. Initial uses of the new cobalt-frec alloys will he power plant valves and turbines. Also. In nuclear reactor applications, the Nnrem alloys will not become activated [Co does), reducing worker-protection and maintenance costs. Tests have confirmed that the new cobalt-free alloys retain their wear-resistant properties when produced as rods and powders, the most common forms used by welders. 

Indirect cost. Indirect cost includes a large list of varied supporting equipment, utilities, and land for the modular major equipment cost method proposed herein. These items are commonly called offsites, which include cost of such items as roadways, land, buildings, warehouses, spare parts, maintenance shops, and electric power and water utilities. In addition to offsites, the indirect cost also includes the field-erection equipment, such as erection cranes, temporary construction buildings, welding supplies, and trucks. All of these items are necessities for the major equipment modules. 

Once the purchased equipment costs are known, the capital investment can be calculated by summing these results and using ratio factors for installation, piping, buildings, instrumentation, electric equipment, thermal isolation, indirect expenses, etc. (Chauvel, 2000). 

To perform simulation and optimisation of a power system using the HOMER tool, information and data on natural resources (such as wind and solar irradiance data), electric and thermal loads, economic constraints, current and future equipment costs, user behaviour and control strategies are required. The main purpose of the techno-economic analysis presented in this chapter was to investigate the impact of diesel generators and batteries replacement with hydrogen technologies, including fuel cells both in technical and financial terms. 

Today s vinyl moulding compounds are successfully meeting the combined challenges of physical properties, appearance, processability, and cost requirements in a variety of specialty injection moulding applications such as appliance parts, business equipment, and electrical enclosures. One of the major reasons why vinyl materials are so versatile is that the PVC resins on which they are based can be easily modified with a variety of additives to tailor the particular performance features of the compounds to their intended applications. Determination of an appropriate combination of PVC resin and additives to produce an effective and cost-competitive compound,... 

In the factor methods for cost estimating, first calculate the purchased or delivered cost of all major equipment, for example, distillation columns, reactors, pumps, heat exchangers, etc. Then multiply the total equipment cost by factors to estimate the various other components of the depreciable capital cost given in Equation 2.2, such as piping and electrical wiring. Thus, we arrive at the cost of installing all the equipment and supplying all the services needed to produce an operational process. 

---