OT: IEEE spectrum on grid parity in China

[Bill Sloman]

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity

They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0441-z

is the published paper (which you can get at for free via the Spectrum link.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Winfield Hill]

Bill Sloman wrote...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity
They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

Sheesh, the IEEE ignoring the elephant in the room.
Well, OK, it was the Nature-Energy authors who first
ignored it, but the IEEE writer continued.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 9:42:53 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:

Bill Sloman wrote...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity
They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

Sheesh, the IEEE ignoring the elephant in the room.
Well, OK, it was the Nature-Energy authors who first
ignored it, but the IEEE writer continued.

Why is it that everyone talks about the solar elephant while ignoring the nuclear gorilla? The issue is not just the availability of renewables. It is the matching of availability to demand. Nukes are the opposite of wind and solar in that they are available 100% of the time and MUST be used since they can't be throttled. The new plants that could be built are still very expensive to build and operate with the same cost being amortized over fewer kWh when throttled raising the cost of electricity.

The point is everyone loves to bash wind and solar electricity production because it requires some means of backup, either storage or other generation capacity. But we already have tons of added generation capacity to mitigate load changes. When using solar or wind power this added generation capacity is shut down accomplishing the intended purpose, reducing production of carbon. The only added cost is the cost of the solar or wind production. Most of the cost of the additional generation capacity is fuel costs, so it does not cost a large amount to keep idle... after all, that is it's intended purpose anyway, to sit idle until needed.

Win,

I believe you have solar on your roof. Today it is overcast here. While not dark, it is rather grey. What is the relative production you see on days like this when there is no sign of the sun? What percentage production do you see compared to the same day with no clouds?

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 23/08/19 18:53, Rick C wrote:

On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 9:42:53 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Bill Sloman wrote...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity
They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

Sheesh, the IEEE ignoring the elephant in the room. Well, OK, it was the
Nature-Energy authors who first ignored it, but the IEEE writer continued.

Why is it that everyone talks about the solar elephant while ignoring the
nuclear gorilla? The issue is not just the availability of renewables. It
is the matching of availability to demand. Nukes are the opposite of wind
and solar in that they are available 100% of the time and MUST be used since
they can't be throttled.

Please explain the physics and/or chemical engineering
behind that (mis) statement.

In fact, nukjes power output can be and is, varied. However
you do want to do that in a gradual, planned fashion.

There are good economic reasons for running nukes constantly,
but that is a different kettle of fish.

The new plants that could be built are still very
expensive to build and operate with the same cost being amortized over fewer
kWh when throttled raising the cost of electricity.

Indeed, and such "backup dispatch" costs should be added
to the costs of irregular and somewhat unpredictable
wind power.

The point is everyone loves to bash wind and solar electricity production
because it requires some means of backup, either storage or other generation
capacity. But we already have tons of added generation capacity to mitigate
load changes.

No we don't. The market is designed to ensure that
isn't the case.

You appear to have a medium term memory deficit.
You have already made many incorrect speculations
on the events of August 9th, so perhaps you can
be forgiven for forgetting that.

When using solar or wind power this added generation capacity
is shut down accomplishing the intended purpose, reducing production of
carbon. The only added cost is the cost of the solar or wind production.
Most of the cost of the additional generation capacity is fuel costs, so it
does not cost a large amount to keep idle... after all, that is it's intended
purpose anyway, to sit idle until needed.

Win,

I believe you have solar on your roof. Today it is overcast here. While not
dark, it is rather grey. What is the relative production you see on days
like this when there is no sign of the sun? What percentage production do
you see compared to the same day with no clouds?

Bugger all in the winter. And the wind power has
been known to more or less disappear for up to a week,
when there is a blocking high pressure.

Now we appreciate you probably haven't witnessed
that yourself, but wise engineers learn from other
people's experience.

 

[Winfield Hill]

Rick C wrote...

I believe you have solar on your roof. Today it is
overcast here. While not dark, it is rather grey.
What is the relative production you see on days
like this when there is no sign of the sun? What
percentage production d= you see ...

Overcast here as well. We made 33kWh today, about
65% of the usual clear sunny day this time of year.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:226d8262-f8ff-4c96-8222-c7b575326f82@googlegroups.com:

Why is it that everyone talks about the solar elephant while
ignoring the nuclear gorilla?

They watched "Trading Places"?

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 3:53:07 AM UTC+10, Rick C wrote:

On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 9:42:53 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Bill Sloman wrote...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity
They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

Sheesh, the IEEE ignoring the elephant in the room.
Well, OK, it was the Nature-Energy authors who first
ignored it, but the IEEE writer continued.

Why is it that everyone talks about the solar elephant while ignoring the nuclear gorilla?

It's more the nuclear mouse.

> The issue is not just the availability of renewables. It is the matching of availability to demand. Nukes are the opposite of wind and solar in that they are available 100% of the time and MUST be used since they can't be throttled.

Nuclear power can be throttled, and the French nuclear system is run at roughly 70% of capacity to match supply and demand. Apparently they throttle back newly fueled reactors a lot harder than reactors that are coming up for a change of fuel rods. The piece I read wasn't too specific about why.

Teh economics of under-running them isn't great. The capital spent in building them still has to be serviced even when they aren't generating maximum revenue.

The new plants that could be built are still very expensive to build and operate with the same cost being amortized over fewer kWh when throttled raising the cost of electricity.

The point is everyone loves to bash wind and solar electricity production because it requires some means of backup, either storage or other generation capacity. But we already have tons of added generation capacity to mitigate load changes. When using solar or wind power this added generation capacity is shut down accomplishing the intended purpose, reducing production of carbon. The only added cost is the cost of the solar or wind production. Most of the cost of the additional generation capacity is fuel costs, so it does not cost a large amount to keep idle... after all, that is it's intended purpose anyway, to sit idle until needed.

In fact pumped and battery storage make perfect sense. You get back roughly 80% of the power you store, and if you have a cheap base-lime source (as nuclear power is claimed to be, by nuclear enthusiasts) it would make sense to use that to charge the storage when demand was low.

<snipped silly question>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 11:47:32 AM UTC+10, Rick C wrote:

On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 7:37:53 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

I believe you have solar on your roof. Today it is
overcast here. While not dark, it is rather grey.
What is the relative production you see on days
like this when there is no sign of the sun? What
percentage production d= you see ...

Overcast here as well. We made 33kWh today, about
65% of the usual clear sunny day this time of year.

That's surprising to me and I know a lot of others.

How much would you make on a day when it is actually raining? I'm sure it is a lot darker then.

Scattered light is just as effective as direct sunlight. Some of the light scattered by clouds is reflected back into space, but it takes thick layers of cloud to reflect a lot of the incident light back into space - most of it gets scattered onto adjacent water droplets. Rain is less effective at scattering light than lots of smaller water droplets, but cloud thick enough to let the smaller droplets merge into raindrops tends to be pretty thick.

Clouds don't actually absorb visible light.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 7:37:53 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:

Rick C wrote...

I believe you have solar on your roof. Today it is
overcast here. While not dark, it is rather grey.
What is the relative production you see on days
like this when there is no sign of the sun? What
percentage production d= you see ...

Overcast here as well. We made 33kWh today, about
65% of the usual clear sunny day this time of year.

That's surprising to me and I know a lot of others.

How much would you make on a day when it is actually raining? I'm sure it is a lot darker then.

What is your max production?

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 24/08/19 06:55, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2019 23:16:02 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 23/08/19 18:53, Rick C wrote:
On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 9:42:53 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Bill Sloman wrote...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity
They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

Sheesh, the IEEE ignoring the elephant in the room. Well, OK, it was the
Nature-Energy authors who first ignored it, but the IEEE writer continued.

Why is it that everyone talks about the solar elephant while ignoring the
nuclear gorilla? The issue is not just the availability of renewables. It
is the matching of availability to demand. Nukes are the opposite of wind
and solar in that they are available 100% of the time and MUST be used since
they can't be throttled.

Please explain the physics and/or chemical engineering
behind that (mis) statement.

In fact, nukjes power output can be and is, varied. However
you do want to do that in a gradual, planned fashion.

This is just the situation in France with high nuclear penetration.
During weekends when consumption is lower, some nuclears are throttled
back or even stopped for the weekends.

Temperature variation will cause stress to tubing, so you rally try to
avoid rapid power level changes.

Thermal cycling is bad for any thermal plant, but is more
important for nukes because of the difficulty of replacing
parts of the plant.

But you knew that.

 

On Fri, 23 Aug 2019 23:16:02 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 23/08/19 18:53, Rick C wrote:
On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 9:42:53 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Bill Sloman wrote...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity
They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

Sheesh, the IEEE ignoring the elephant in the room. Well, OK, it was the
Nature-Energy authors who first ignored it, but the IEEE writer continued.

Why is it that everyone talks about the solar elephant while ignoring the
nuclear gorilla? The issue is not just the availability of renewables. It
is the matching of availability to demand. Nukes are the opposite of wind
and solar in that they are available 100% of the time and MUST be used since
they can't be throttled.

Please explain the physics and/or chemical engineering
behind that (mis) statement.

In fact, nukjes power output can be and is, varied. However
you do want to do that in a gradual, planned fashion.

This is just the situation in France with high nuclear penetration.
During weekends when consumption is lower, some nuclears are throttled
back or even stopped for the weekends.

Temperature variation will cause stress to tubing, so you rally try to
avoid rapid power level changes.

There are good economic reasons for running nukes constantly,
but that is a different kettle of fish.

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2019-08-24, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 3:53:07 AM UTC+10, Rick C wrote:
On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 9:42:53 AM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Bill Sloman wrote...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/china-gridparity
They don't say anything about energy storage and it's associated costs.

Sheesh, the IEEE ignoring the elephant in the room.
Well, OK, it was the Nature-Energy authors who first
ignored it, but the IEEE writer continued.

Why is it that everyone talks about the solar elephant while ignoring the nuclear gorilla?

It's more the nuclear mouse.

The issue is not just the availability of renewables. It is the matching of availability to demand. Nukes are the opposite of wind and solar in that they are available 100% of the time and MUST be used since they can't be throttled.

Nuclear power can be throttled, and the French nuclear system is run at roughly 70% of capacity to match supply and demand. Apparently they throttle back newly fueled reactors a lot harder than reactors that are coming up for a change of fuel rods. The piece I read wasn't too specific about why.

one of the problems with throttling is that the normal reaction
produces isotopes that that produce isotopes that absorb neutrons.
this is, called "poisoning" so you need to be producing enough
neutrons when theese poisons pop-up to sustain a reaction else the
chain reaction falls over and you have to wait for the poison to
decay before it can be re-started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit

--
When I tried casting out nines I made a hash of it.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 1:55:14 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

This is just the situation in France with high nuclear penetration.
During weekends when consumption is lower, some nuclears are throttled
back or even stopped for the weekends.

Temperature variation will cause stress to tubing, so you rally try to
avoid rapid power level changes.

How do they avoid Xe135 poisoning?

I've read that they do throttle nukes, but they don't explain how to avoid the poisoning problem. They also don't address the cost issue. Are electricity costs high in France?

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Phil Allison]

Bill Sloman wrote:

Clouds don't actually absorb visible light.

** On a dark cloudy to overcast day, the visible light level is only 1% to 5% of that on a sunny one - as anyone with a Lux meter can verify.

So the current output from a PV cell ought to vary in a similar way.



..... Phil

 

upsidedown@downunder.com wrote in
newsd32mehm4ld7t8hjdatpdodh2e5hcucpqu@4ax.com:

only part of the panels
are shadowed by the clod,

Yeah, clods like you should probably avoid high tech solutions like
solar panels. A big turd like you casts a big shadow and the downwind
stench must be damn near deadly.

 

On Fri, 23 Aug 2019 19:26:54 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 11:47:32 AM UTC+10, Rick C wrote:
On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 7:37:53 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

I believe you have solar on your roof. Today it is
overcast here. While not dark, it is rather grey.
What is the relative production you see on days
like this when there is no sign of the sun? What
percentage production d= you see ...

Overcast here as well. We made 33kWh today, about
65% of the usual clear sunny day this time of year.

That's surprising to me and I know a lot of others.

How much would you make on a day when it is actually raining? I'm sure it is a lot darker then.

Scattered light is just as effective as direct sunlight. Some of the light scattered by clouds is reflected back into space,

The type of scattering depends on the cloud particle size vs.
wavelength. In backscatter, the light is scattered upwards to the sky,
in isotropic scattering half of the scattering is scattered above
horizon. Only forward scatter from large particles will scatter
predominantly downwards.

Looking out from an aircraft window above the clouds, looking
downwards towards the clouds, the clouds are extremely bright. That
light scattered from the clouds will never reach the solar panels on
the ground.

When the plane descends through the clouds, one should expect that it
would also be very bright inside the cloud due to the forward and the
down and side part of the isotropic scatter.

However, this doesn't match my observations.

Also looking at the MPPT controller of a solar panel, the operating
point varies constantly with say 2/8 to 6/8 cloudiness, when cloud
comes and goes. Clearly when even a small cloud comes between the sun
and panel, the output will drop.

With a geographically spread out solar farm, only part of the panels
are shadowed by the clod, thus the total farm output doesn't vary too
much. But still it would be interesting to compare the output at 0/8
an 8/8 cloudiness.

but it takes thick layers of cloud to reflect a lot of the incident light back into space - most of it gets scattered onto adjacent water droplets. Rain is less effective at scattering light than lots of smaller water droplets, but cloud thick enough to let the smaller droplets merge into raindrops tends to be pretty thick.

Clouds don't actually absorb visible light.

If clouds would absorb a lot of light, it would heat up and
re-evaporate the cloud particles. Some light morning clouds disappear
before noon. Is this due to direct solar radiation absorbed in the
cloud or due to heated up ground, sending out long wave IR captured by
atmospheric H2O is an other matter.

 

[Winfield Hill]

Rick C wrote...

Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

I believe you have solar on your roof. Today it is
overcast here. While not dark, it is rather grey.
What is the relative production you see on days
like this when there is no sign of the sun? What
percentage production d= you see ...

Overcast here as well. We made 33kWh today, about
65% of the usual clear sunny day this time of year.

That's surprising to me and I know a lot of others.

Our enphase micro-inverter system is pretty efficient.

How much would you make on a day when it is actually
raining? I'm sure it is a lot darker then.

Yes, it can drop down, but always makes something.

> What is your max production?

This time of year with the sun angles, absolute max,
with super-clear sky, is 55kWh. Best ever, 63kWh.
The maximum power level from our roof's 34 panels is
8.5kW, limited by a 250W micro-inverter on each panel.

We make 10 to 12MWh per year. Right now our netmeter
reading is about -1000 kWh. Saving up for the winter.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2019-08-24 09:26, Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 1:55:14 AM UTC-4,
upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

This is just the situation in France with high nuclear
penetration. During weekends when consumption is lower, some
nuclears are throttled back or even stopped for the weekends.

Temperature variation will cause stress to tubing, so you rally try
to avoid rapid power level changes.

They also don't address the cost issue.
Are electricity costs high in France?

0.123 Euros/kWh for the day rate and 0.087 Euro/kWh for the
night rate.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 2:23:55 PM UTC-4, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2019-08-24 09:26, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 1:55:14 AM UTC-4,
upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

This is just the situation in France with high nuclear
penetration. During weekends when consumption is lower, some
nuclears are throttled back or even stopped for the weekends.

Temperature variation will cause stress to tubing, so you rally try
to avoid rapid power level changes.


[...] They also don't address the cost issue.
Are electricity costs high in France?


0.123 Euros/kWh for the day rate and 0.087 Euro/kWh for the
night rate.

I wonder how the new EPR reactor will impact that? More than triple the estimated cost and quadrupled schedule. Do you think they will continue to sell these reactors?

I'm willing to bet they don't load follow with these.

I still haven't found how nukes avoid Xe135 poisoning when load following. Maybe it's a very, very slow load following. Xe135 has a half life of some 6 or so hours as does the precursor I135. That means when you throttle back the Xe killing neutrons fall back, but the production of more Xe135 doesn't for hours allowing Xe135 to increase and absorb more neutrons than is desirable. Cut back too quickly and you can't bring the reactor back up for hours until the Xe135 decays.

Maybe they have a way of maintaining neutron production even as the energy output is reduced? I have no idea how they would accomplish that. Or maybe the load following is just very shallow. I thought I read about at least one reactor that could be cut far back, maybe to 30% without poisoning.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 5:53:46 PM UTC-4, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2019-08-24 20:45, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 2:23:55 PM UTC-4, Jeroen Belleman
wrote:
On 2019-08-24 09:26, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 1:55:14 AM UTC-4,
upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

This is just the situation in France with high nuclear
penetration. During weekends when consumption is lower, some
nuclears are throttled back or even stopped for the weekends.

Temperature variation will cause stress to tubing, so you rally
try to avoid rapid power level changes.


[...] They also don't address the cost issue. Are electricity
costs high in France?


0.123 Euros/kWh for the day rate and 0.087 Euro/kWh for the night
rate.

I wonder how the new EPR reactor will impact that? More than triple
the estimated cost and quadrupled schedule. Do you think they will
continue to sell these reactors?

I'm willing to bet they don't load follow with these.

I still haven't found how nukes avoid Xe135 poisoning when load
following. Maybe it's a very, very slow load following. Xe135 has a
half life of some 6 or so hours as does the precursor I135. That
means when you throttle back the Xe killing neutrons fall back, but
the production of more Xe135 doesn't for hours allowing Xe135 to
increase and absorb more neutrons than is desirable. Cut back too
quickly and you can't bring the reactor back up for hours until the
Xe135 decays.

Maybe they have a way of maintaining neutron production even as the
energy output is reduced? I have no idea how they would accomplish
that. Or maybe the load following is just very shallow. I thought I
read about at least one reactor that could be cut far back, maybe to
30% without poisoning.


Power is regulated by raising or lowering the control rods,
and by manipulating the concentration of boric acid in the
primary circuit water. The problem is that raising the control
rods exposes a region of the core that is relatively less
poisoned by Xe135, and which therefore risks being overly
reactive. This is controlled by positioning fractional-height
control rods.

I haven't yet found much about the typical range of the output
power regulation. I guess it isn't a lot. Typical time constants
are a few minutes.

Yes, they have to worry about hot spots, but the Xe135 poisoning is an issue in general not really the same at all. If they want to dial the reactor back to 50% from 100% Xe135 poisoning becomes an issue unless it is done slowly, over the course of hours or days.

This is what I'm wondering how they get around. Is it because they simply don't exercise that much control over the power output? Instead they only cut the power in small increments? If they need to cut back by larger amounts do they have to take a long time to do it?

One report I read about reactors in France said they load follow the daily cycle. Many days that is 50% here in the US. That would be hard to do in 24 hours I would expect. I can't find any details on how this is done.

--

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209