OT: 'Photon Farming' in California

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 23:57:23 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

I was surprised to learn that in the UK wind power is on par with nuclear capacity and at times equals CCGT (gas) usage.

>They also have significant amount of "biomass" generation. Not sure what that is, I guess making gas from plants and burning that?

Waste incinerators ? A few years ago, there was a waste incinerator
building boom in UK. Some of that burning waste is organic

 

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 16:35:43 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
wrote:

On 4/08/2019 2:44 am, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?


It isn't really competitive, it's just benefiting from a market that's
been seriously distorted by political considerations.

The annual capacity factor (CF) for fixed panels is about 0.3 on low
latitudes and about 0.1 for high latitude countries. Thus the quoted
price [€/Wp or $/Wp] must be multiplied by 3 to 10 to get the
comparable costs with high CF production forms, such as nuclear or
fossil fuels.

Solar panels can be quite competitive, if you also have plenty of
hydro production, run on solar during th day and on water during the
night. It makes sense to build solar capacity to similar numbers as
you have existing hydro production. Noting the day/night consumption
difference, it is possible to have slightly more solar production,
perhaps 1.5 to 2 times the peak hydro power.

Try selling any other commodity on the basis that you'll supply it when
it's convenient to you, and not otherwise.

Solar power makes sense for charging EVs during the day and running
air conditioning directly as well as making cold water to be used by
air conditioning in late evening. But other than that there is hard to
find profitable use of excessive solar power.

Sylvia.

 

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:06:21 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 2:49:53 AM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 4/08/2019 1:44 am, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?



I'm waiting for the day when solar routines displaces all the fossil
fuel generation, and owners discover that when all the remaining
generation has a zero marginal cost of generation, the market price
collapses.

At the same time the greenies will finally realise that they cannot
build any more solar farms, because there's no use for the power they
generate, but the zero-carbon future still hasn't been reached, because
of all the fossil fuel generation during the large part of day when
solar doesn't produce.

Then the politicians will discover that nuclear power isn't so bad after
all.

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive. The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling.

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

The original price for the 1600 MW EPR in Olkiluoto was 3.2 G€. The
estimated current cost of the seriously late project is about double,
but still a long way to $19 billion.

>Then you seem to ignore the potential for storing energy to make renewable energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of pumped storage hydro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak. Obviously it can't be so expensive.

The problem with pumped storage is the low total efficiency as well as
the lack of suitable places for the reservoirs. Building such
reservoirs might also have significant environmental impact.

If there are deep old mines with large cavities, these could be used
for short time peaks. In the best case with deep cavities well below
sea level, the sea would be the upper storage and the mine cavity the
lower reservoir. That would have very little environment impact.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 4:35:50 PM UTC+10, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 4/08/2019 2:44 am, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?


It isn't really competitive, it's just benefiting from a market that's
been seriously distorted by political considerations.

Got numbers to demonstrate that? It was true a few years ago, but since the Chinese started manufacturing high yield solar cells in high volume the price seems to have got pretty competitive.

Try selling any other commodity on the basis that you'll supply it when
it's convenient to you, and not otherwise.

Depends on the price you can sell it at when you have got it to sell.

Works fine for wheat and wool. The Australian hydrogen freaks want to turn solar power into liquid hydrogen and ship it off to Japan and Korea, and they couldn't care less when it gets supplied.

If it's cheap enough, the customers will buy their own storage (the hydrogen freaks being a case in point).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 4:20:16 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 17:01:59 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 4:10:45 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 10 Aug 2019 17:17:09 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 2:03:40 AM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 10 Aug 2019 13:52:03 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

<snip>

After this minute or two, fast starting emergency gas turbines or
diesels must be running so that the big generators can be scaled down
to nominal capacity.

However, a lot of renewable sources are inverter connected. These
inverters have no overload capacity or at most a few second capability
before overheating.

There is a fallacy here. The inverters aren't the expensive part of the installation, and could be over-sized for very little extra money. The rotating machinery is expensive, but it is essentially the same kind of hardware that you find in conventional generators, and have the same kind of thermal time constants which would allow them to push out extra current for a minute or two.

Are you sure that a small 3 MW wind generator and power plant size 300
MW generator have the same thermal time constant ?

I'm sure that they won't. But thermal time constants scale fairly slowly with size and mass, and wind turbines will still be minutes rather than seconds.

It wouldn't be difficult to put put a temperature sensor in the windings and measure how hot they were getting.

The magnetic circuit tends to be more vulnerable - heat magnetic components above their Curie temperature and they stop being ferromagnetic - but they are pretty close to the windings, so it might not be worth extending the wiring to monitor them directly.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 13/08/2019 10:01, piglet wrote:

On 13/08/2019 7:57 am, Rick C wrote:
I was surprised to learn that in the UK wind power is on par with
nuclear capacity and at times equals CCGT (gas) usage.  They also have

At this time of year daytime UK solar peak output also tops Nuclear. It
flatlines in winter for months at a time. See:

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Today a fairly sunny midsummers day at lunchtime the mix was:

CCGT 40%
Solar 20%
Nuclear 15%
Biomass 9%
Wind 7%
Coal 2%

significant amount of "biomass" generation.  Not sure what that is, I
guess making gas from plants and burning that?


Not typically grown explicitly to burn. Biomass is more typically a
bye-product of farming, forestry, landfill and sewage waste. Biogas is
sometimes included within the definition.

Believe it or not the UK's biggest biomass plant Drax in Yorkshire makes
its wood pellets in the Mississippi, USA and ships 16MT over each year!

http://www.apgtf-uk.com/files/workshops/14thWorkshop2014/203BenAntony.pdf

See Table: Summary of Power stations in the UK: Coal/biomass >300MW

And the description of their wood pellet plant in the USA by Drax

https://www.drax.com/technology/this-is-how-you-make-a-biomass-wood-pellet/

It strikes me as madness to be shipping this stuff with relatively low
energy density round the world in bulk but that is exactly what they do!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 4:49:53 PM UTC+10, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 4/08/2019 1:44 am, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

I'm waiting for the day when solar routines displaces all the fossil
fuel generation, and owners discover that when all the remaining
generation has a zero marginal cost of generation, the market price
collapses.

At the same time the greenies will finally realise that they cannot
build any more solar farms, because there's no use for the power they
generate, but the zero-carbon future still hasn't been reached, because
of all the fossil fuel generation during the large part of day when
solar doesn't produce.

Then the politicians will discover that nuclear power isn't so bad after
all.

Actually, Malcom Turnbull set the Snowy 2 pumped storage scheme going, rather than going nuclear.

He's gone, but the politicians who replaced him still seem to think that Snow 2 is a good idea.

https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/our-scheme/snowy20/about-snowy-2-0-2/

The people in South Australia that bought Elon Musk's 100MW 129 MW.hour battery were politicians too. It is a fairly obvious solution to the problem.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 11:51:11 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 06:28:04 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 4:35:50 PM UTC+10, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 4/08/2019 2:44 am, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?


It isn't really competitive, it's just benefiting from a market that's
been seriously distorted by political considerations.

Got numbers to demonstrate that? It was true a few years ago, but since the Chinese started manufacturing high yield solar cells in high volume the price seems to have got pretty competitive.

Try selling any other commodity on the basis that you'll supply it when
it's convenient to you, and not otherwise.

Depends on the price you can sell it at when you have got it to sell.

At some times with a large production, the price will drop to zero. If
no money is available at times, this will limit future investments
including replacements.

With even a higher overproduction, some solar and wind plants must
simply be disconnected from net . I bet the greenies are beating their
heads, when a lot of wind turbines are stationary when there would be
a nice wind

They'd be more likely to beat on the politicians who weren't quick enough to install storage for the excess power.

South Australia already has Elon Musk's 100MW 129 MW.hour battery, and Malcom Turnbull got the ball rolling on Snowy 2, which is going to take longer to come on-line.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 9:28:51 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:06:21 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 2:49:53 AM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 4/08/2019 1:44 am, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?



I'm waiting for the day when solar routines displaces all the fossil
fuel generation, and owners discover that when all the remaining
generation has a zero marginal cost of generation, the market price
collapses.

At the same time the greenies will finally realise that they cannot
build any more solar farms, because there's no use for the power they
generate, but the zero-carbon future still hasn't been reached, because
of all the fossil fuel generation during the large part of day when
solar doesn't produce.

Then the politicians will discover that nuclear power isn't so bad after
all.

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive. The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling..

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

The original price for the 1600 MW EPR in Olkiluoto was 3.2 G€. The
estimated current cost of the seriously late project is about double,
but still a long way to $19 billion.

Then you seem to ignore the potential for storing energy to make renewable energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of pumped storage hydro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak. Obviously it can't be so expensive.

The problem with pumped storage is the low total efficiency as well as
the lack of suitable places for the reservoirs. Building such
reservoirs might also have significant environmental impact.

https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_191.shtml

Dinowig in Wales gives back about 75% of the energy stored. Batteries can get up to 85%. As total efficiencies go, this isn't bad.

The hydrogen economy - electrolyse water and burn the hydrogen in gas turbines or fuel cells seems to offer about 25%.

If there are deep old mines with large cavities, these could be used
for short time peaks. In the best case with deep cavities well below
sea level, the sea would be the upper storage and the mine cavity the
lower reservoir. That would have very little environment impact.

Or you can pump air into the caverns with turbo-compressers and let it out again through the same turbines.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 06:28:04 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 4:35:50 PM UTC+10, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 4/08/2019 2:44 am, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?


It isn't really competitive, it's just benefiting from a market that's
been seriously distorted by political considerations.

Got numbers to demonstrate that? It was true a few years ago, but since the Chinese started manufacturing high yield solar cells in high volume the price seems to have got pretty competitive.

Try selling any other commodity on the basis that you'll supply it when
it's convenient to you, and not otherwise.

Depends on the price you can sell it at when you have got it to sell.

At some times with a large production, the price will drop to zero. If
no money is available at times, this will limit future investments
including replacements.

With even a higher overproduction, some solar and wind plants must
simply be disconnected from net . I bet the greenies are beating their
heads, when a lot of wind turbines are stationary when there would be
a nice wind

Works fine for wheat and wool. The Australian hydrogen freaks want to turn solar power into liquid hydrogen and ship it off to Japan and Korea, and they couldn't care less when it gets supplied.

If it's cheap enough, the customers will buy their own storage (the hydrogen freaks being a case in point).

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:44:06 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 23:57:23 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:


I was surprised to learn that in the UK wind power is on par with nuclear capacity and at times equals CCGT (gas) usage.


They also have significant amount of "biomass" generation. Not sure what that is, I guess making gas from plants and burning that?

Waste incinerators ? A few years ago, there was a waste incinerator
building boom in UK. Some of that burning waste is organic

When Nijmegen (in the Netherlands) started getting us to sort our garbage, the calorific value of the fraction that did get burnt went way up, and they to rebuild the steam generators to take the higher temperatures (which fed into the local power plant and district heating system).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:25:29 PM UTC+10, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 13/08/2019 5:06 pm, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 2:49:53 AM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 4/08/2019 1:44 am, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only
on good days?



I'm waiting for the day when solar routines displaces all the
fossil fuel generation, and owners discover that when all the
remaining generation has a zero marginal cost of generation, the
market price collapses.

At the same time the greenies will finally realise that they
cannot build any more solar farms, because there's no use for the
power they generate, but the zero-carbon future still hasn't been
reached, because of all the fossil fuel generation during the large
part of day when solar doesn't produce.

Then the politicians will discover that nuclear power isn't so bad
after all.

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive.
The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost
$19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without
counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting
the cost of waste handling.

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

Then you seem to ignore the potential for storing energy to make
renewable energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of
pumped storage hydro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak.
Obviously it can't be so expensive.

When used for peak management, it only needs to be cheaper than the
alternative, which is typically gas powered generation.

It's not just the power that matters, it's the energy, and you can't
just build pumped storage anywhere you feel like it - there needs to be
a practical way of storing large quantities of water at two
significantly different levels, or there needs to be a place near the
sea where sea water can be stored at a significantly higher than sea level.

Unless you go in for pumped air storage, where large underground caverns are handy, but there's a lot of ground underfoot where you can dig caverns. Often there are mines down there (if they aren't filled with water which you could pump out into artificial lakes - or real ones).

Pumped storage schemes do start out by exploiting situations that lend themselves easily to the job, but there's a lot more landscape around if you need more.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 5:25:29 AM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 13/08/2019 5:06 pm, Rick C wrote:

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive.
The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost
$19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without
counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting
the cost of waste handling.

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

Then you seem to ignore the potential for storing energy to make
renewable energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of
pumped storage hydro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak.
Obviously it can't be so expensive.

When used for peak management, it only needs to be cheaper than the
alternative, which is typically gas powered generation.

It's not just the power that matters, it's the energy, and you can't
just build pumped storage anywhere you feel like it - there needs to be
a practical way of storing large quantities of water at two
significantly different levels, or there needs to be a place near the
sea where sea water can be stored at a significantly higher than sea level.

And yet there seems to be quite a bit of it used in the UK. Maybe they aren't so backwards after all.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:28:51 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:06:21 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive. The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling..

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

The original price for the 1600 MW EPR in Olkiluoto was 3.2 G€. The
estimated current cost of the seriously late project is about double,
but still a long way to $19 billion.

What is the projected cost per kWh? What are the uncounted costs? Nuclear is not unlike fossil fuels, significant costs are not counted because they are not current costs.

Then you seem to ignore the potential for storing energy to make renewable energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of pumped storage hydro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak. Obviously it can't be so expensive.

The problem with pumped storage is the low total efficiency

"The round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%–80%, with some sources claiming up to 87%."

Pumped hydro is currently used because it saves money. How can you claim "low efficiency" is a problem? Sounds to me like it can be very efficient. What's the efficiency of letting generation sit idle or tossing kWh from renewables because we don't need them at that moment?

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:01:49 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 16:35:43 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid
wrote:

On 4/08/2019 2:44 am, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?


It isn't really competitive, it's just benefiting from a market that's
been seriously distorted by political considerations.

The annual capacity factor (CF) for fixed panels is about 0.3 on low
latitudes and about 0.1 for high latitude countries. Thus the quoted
price [€/Wp or $/Wp] must be multiplied by 3 to 10 to get the
comparable costs with high CF production forms, such as nuclear or
fossil fuels.

Solar panels can be quite competitive, if you also have plenty of
hydro production, run on solar during th day and on water during the
night. It makes sense to build solar capacity to similar numbers as
you have existing hydro production. Noting the day/night consumption
difference, it is possible to have slightly more solar production,
perhaps 1.5 to 2 times the peak hydro power.

Try selling any other commodity on the basis that you'll supply it when
it's convenient to you, and not otherwise.

Solar power makes sense for charging EVs during the day and running
air conditioning directly as well as making cold water to be used by
air conditioning in late evening. But other than that there is hard to
find profitable use of excessive solar power.

I believe if you define it as "excessive" then by definition it will be hard to find a use for.

I find it funny that people think it should all be done by competitive market forces. If things were left to that we would not currently have any solar and likely very little wind power. Instead we have a market that is booming and prices are falling and will continue to fall. We have energy storage that is becoming cost effective on a large scale. By subsidizing renewable energy we will reach a point where it is economically the best solution as well as being a solution that doesn't cause all the problems of current energy sources.

I think we need to get over it and accept that we need to make this work. So why banter about all the tradeoffs which are well understood and mitigated. It's just a matter of getting things into high enough production rates that the costs fall to advantageous numbers. Then we can end the subsidies on the mainstream technologies and see if there are other renewable sources that are worth exploring.

I still like the idea of beaming energy from satellites. I can't imagine that we can't make such an arrangement as least as safe as damns and various power generation. I suppose weather is still an issue... well, in the UK anyway. lol

--

Rick C.

--+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
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[Rick C]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 11:46:12 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:28:51 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:06:21 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive. The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling.

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

The original price for the 1600 MW EPR in Olkiluoto was 3.2 G€. The
estimated current cost of the seriously late project is about double,
but still a long way to $19 billion.

Wow! I did a little reading on the EPR and it was HUGELY over budget and way late. $3.5 Billion and 5 years turned into $10 Billion and 14 years and it's still not online!!! If they had known the actual budget and schedule up front, would they have even started this project?

This is exactly why nuclear power plant construction has virtually come to a stand still in the US.

Remember, these are investments intended to make a profit. Companies are willing to take such huge risks. Heck a pair of reactors in South Carolina were killed after spending $2 Billion when it became obvious they would not be able to pay for the actual costs. Two billions dollars wasted trying to build a nuclear plant with no return!!!

Yeah, nuclear is definitely the way to go...

I read further in the article and found another plant that has a similar history.

"Areva’s second EPR, being built at the Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant in France, has not fared much better. Construction started at the end of 2007 and was slated to end in 2012, at a cost of €3.3 billion ($3.8 billion). On current estimates it will cost €10.9 billion ($12.6 billion)."

Sorry, the $19 billion projection for the North Anna reactor doesn't sound so out of line to me! Sounds to me like they are being very realistic knowing how nuclear projects typically happen...

--

Rick C.

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[Rick C]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:28:51 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:06:21 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive. The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling..

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

The original price for the 1600 MW EPR in Olkiluoto was 3.2 G€. The
estimated current cost of the seriously late project is about double,
but still a long way to $19 billion.

Wow! I did a little reading on the EPR and it was HUGELY over budget and way late. $3.5 Billion and 5 years turned into $10 Billion and 14 years and it's still not online!!! If they had known the actual budget and schedule up front, would they have even started this project?

This is exactly why nuclear power plant construction has virtually come to a stand still in the US.

Remember, these are investments intended to make a profit. Companies are willing to take such huge risks. Heck a pair of reactors in South Carolina were killed after spending $2 Billion when it became obvious they would not be able to pay for the actual costs. Two billions dollars wasted trying to build a nuclear plant with no return!!!

Yeah, nuclear is definitely the way to go...

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:46:12 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 13/08/2019 10:01, piglet wrote:
On 13/08/2019 7:57 am, Rick C wrote:
I was surprised to learn that in the UK wind power is on par with
nuclear capacity and at times equals CCGT (gas) usage.  They also have

At this time of year daytime UK solar peak output also tops Nuclear. It
flatlines in winter for months at a time. See:

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Today a fairly sunny midsummers day at lunchtime the mix was:

CCGT 40%
Solar 20%
Nuclear 15%
Biomass 9%
Wind 7%
Coal 2%

significant amount of "biomass" generation.  Not sure what that is, I
guess making gas from plants and burning that?


Not typically grown explicitly to burn. Biomass is more typically a
bye-product of farming, forestry, landfill and sewage waste. Biogas is
sometimes included within the definition.

Believe it or not the UK's biggest biomass plant Drax in Yorkshire makes
its wood pellets in the Mississippi, USA and ships 16MT over each year!

http://www.apgtf-uk.com/files/workshops/14thWorkshop2014/203BenAntony.pdf

See Table: Summary of Power stations in the UK: Coal/biomass >300MW

And the description of their wood pellet plant in the USA by Drax

https://www.drax.com/technology/this-is-how-you-make-a-biomass-wood-pellet/

It strikes me as madness to be shipping this stuff with relatively low
energy density round the world in bulk but that is exactly what they do!

Madness??? Shipping is not a large cost I hope you realize. In the grand scheme of things shipping is pretty cheap. One of the advantages of economy of scale.

--

Rick C.

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[Sylvia Else]

On 14/08/2019 1:12 am, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 5:25:29 AM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 13/08/2019 5:06 pm, Rick C wrote:

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive.
The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost
$19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without
counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting
the cost of waste handling.

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

Then you seem to ignore the potential for storing energy to make
renewable energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of
pumped storage hydro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak.
Obviously it can't be so expensive.

When used for peak management, it only needs to be cheaper than the
alternative, which is typically gas powered generation.

It's not just the power that matters, it's the energy, and you can't
just build pumped storage anywhere you feel like it - there needs to be
a practical way of storing large quantities of water at two
significantly different levels, or there needs to be a place near the
sea where sea water can be stored at a significantly higher than sea level.

And yet there seems to be quite a bit of it used in the UK. Maybe they aren't so backwards after all.

I can only find reference to four, all in the mountainous parts of
Scotland and Wales. Their storage capacity is limited. They get pumped
at night, using electricity from coal or nuclear.

Sylvia.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, August 14, 2019 at 7:14:22 PM UTC+10, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 14/08/2019 1:12 am, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 5:25:29 AM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 13/08/2019 5:06 pm, Rick C wrote:

Nuclear isn't "bad" (except for the waste issue) it's just expensive.
The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost
$19 billion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without
counting the interest, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting
the cost of waste handling.

How much are you willing to pay for using nuclear?

Then you seem to ignore the potential for storing energy to make
renewable energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of
pumped storage hydro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak.
Obviously it can't be so expensive.

When used for peak management, it only needs to be cheaper than the
alternative, which is typically gas powered generation.

It's not just the power that matters, it's the energy, and you can't
just build pumped storage anywhere you feel like it - there needs to be
a practical way of storing large quantities of water at two
significantly different levels, or there needs to be a place near the
sea where sea water can be stored at a significantly higher than sea level.

And yet there seems to be quite a bit of it used in the UK. Maybe they aren't so backwards after all.

I can only find reference to four, all in the mountainous parts of
Scotland and Wales. Their storage capacity is limited. They get pumped
at night, using electricity from coal or nuclear.

I rather doubt that the source of the electricity matters. Wind works perfectly well at night (if the wind is blowing). The pumps would work fine during the day if there was any need to use them

Dinowig has a storage capacity of 9.1 GW.hours, which is finite, and thus limited, but quite a bit more than the 129 MW.hour Tesla batter in South Australia which is already big enough to be useful.

Snowy 2 seems to be aimed at 350 GW.hours of capacity, which is quite a bit larger.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney