[ThisLittleLightofMine]

So what exactly does a power plant operator do??

[FreedomPoster]

>>So what exactly does a power plant operator do??

Knows what to do with something like this:

I worked a couple quarters as a co-op engineering student in what was at the time the world's largest coal-fired powerplant. An experienced operator knows all the equipment behind all those gauges and switches, and what do do when things to wrong.

[Taylor]

The style of power plant we are refering to is a "Rankine cycle plant". This entails taking extremely pure water, heating it until in converts to steam (saturated steam), adding additional heat until the steam is superheated, and admitting the steam into a turbine (the steam is generally 1000 deg f and 2400 psig at this point).

The steam flows through the turbine much like air blows through a pinwheel, until nearly all of the energy is used up in the steam and the cool steam is converted back to water, where the process starts all over again.

The entire point of spinning the tubine is to turn the generator which is attached to the same shaft as the turbine.

This is obviously a gross over-simplification of an elaborate and complex process. To answer your question, Power Plant Operators operate the hundreds of pieces of equipment associated with generating electricity, 24-7.