Looking to the large power requirement of the country even with best of efforts to increase renewable capacity, coal, in short to medium term, would continue to lead the resources for generating power in India. With this in backdrop, this paper attempts to optimize the generating sources used for base load plants, Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) is used for optimization which gives the most feasible sustainable, economic and environment friendly solution. The results obtained from HOMER Software are analysed and from these results it is evident that coal as fuel for base load plants should be used to maximum capacity. Coal based plants when used at maximum / optimum capacity results in maximum generation capacity and hence lowest environmental impact. Mainly three resources are used for base load plants coal, gas and hydro.
Key words: Base load plants, Energy mix, coal generating stations, HOMER, Optimization
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