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Energy & Renewables vocabulary · Power Generation and Power Plants

Installed capacity

Meaning in energy & renewables, with examples

nounCore term

In energy & renewables, installed capacity means: The maximum power output that a power plant, or all the plants in a country, can deliver according to their design, usually given in MW or GW.

In Turkish: kurulu güç, kurulu kapasite

How it is used

A key figure in reports, investor presentations and national statistics. Installed capacity grows or reaches a level, and new capacity is added. It shows the size of a fleet, not how much it actually produces; real output depends on the capacity factor.

Example sentences

  1. Solar installed capacity in the country has more than tripled in five years.

  2. Wind makes up 12 percent of installed capacity but a smaller share of actual generation.

Common collocations

  • total installed capacity
  • add installed capacity
  • installed capacity of 500 MW
  • installed solar capacity
  • megawattA unit of power equal to one million watts, or 1,000 kilowatts. It is used to describe the size of power plants, wind turbines and large solar projects.
  • capacity factorThe ratio of the electricity a plant actually produces over a period to what it would produce running at full capacity the whole time, shown as a percentage.
  • generationThe process of producing electricity, or the amount of electricity produced over a period, by power plants, solar panels, wind turbines and other sources.
  • power plantAn industrial facility that produces electricity on a large scale, for example by burning gas or coal, splitting atoms or using the energy of water, wind or sunlight.

More terms: Power Generation and Power Plants

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