This tutorial was written from a commercial perspective, not a technical one. So we won't be delving into highly technical details, or boring you with useless information that only an engineer could love. Instead, we'll try to give you just enough information, so that you can manage your technicians and engineers. You'll also find out what drives the economics when developing a power plant.

But first, a brief word about the first steps in designing power plants:

Electricity is the most convenient form of energy for home, industrial or commercial use. But we don't make electricity - we convert other types of energy (such as coal, petroleum, biomass, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind etc.) into an electrical form. So the fuel you start with dictates what equipment you're going to need to do the conversion into electricity.

When a client hires us to conduct a feasibility study for a proposed power plant, we start by looking at the following determining factors in the conversion process:

1. Type of energy/fuel available;
2. Quantity and quality of the energy/fuel;
3. Cost of the energy/fuel;
4. Quantity and timing of the electricity required.

It is only once we have nailed down these parameters, that our engineers start to think about which technology to use.