any enginears out there?

[snipescc]

I've just had a thought. Does anyone know if power plants at high altitude are more energy efficient? As I recall, one way that power plants make electricity is by heating up water, making steam, and using the steam to drive turbines that spin a magnet in a coil of wire. Water boils at lower temperatures at high altitudes. This means that it

Comments

[sweetbacchus]

mmm If I remember science class correctly, yeah it would mean less power.

[peristarkawan]

Heat engines aren't run at boiling point. They're run as hot as you can get them, to increase the temperature difference and be as efficient as possible. Thus to make a heat engine more efficient, you would want to set it up in a cold place, not necessarily in a high place. But the gains would be small, and since we tend not to live in cold places, you would then generally have to transport the energy over longer distances, which would probably result in lower efficiency overall.