Solar panel manufacturing plant 25mw/year

[greenHouse]

He tells me that you really don't feel comfortable deep down in the operating rooms when marketing is driving the turbines in funny fashion - everything is rocking and rolling.

"Marketing" has nothing to do with it. The grid must (almost) perfectly balance production and consumption at all times. Failure to do that can result in the physical destruction of equipment, grid collapse, loss of life, A Really Bad Time, and many other things.

Which plants are used for regulation services is usually determined by cost to operate the service. If a hydro plant can provide regulation, great, since the water in the reservoir is already there and isn't going anywhere other than through the penstock sooner or later.

I also question whether or not your brother works anywhere near a hydro plant power house since the speed of the turbines is fixed by the number of poles in the generator and the line frequency. Which is to say that they are synchronized to the line frequency. And don't go ramping up and down all day long. Ever. They synchronize, lock, and stay locked. Physics makes sure that happens -- instantaneous and continuously.

[Sunking]

You haven't the slightest clue how an electric grid is operated, do you?

No I don't have any clue what so ever, only worked for AEP for 10 years as a substation and transmission engineer, and still work work for several utilities on contract basis doing the same thing today

"N-1" is the configuration of the grid after the single largest resource (generator, transmission segment, whatever) has failed and the grid has to be reconfigured ... with N-1 of whatever the resource is.

This statement proves you might be the one that has no idea of what they are talking about. All power companies operate their plants at N+1 for redundancy. So let me explain it too so so when you go to another forum you will not make the same mistake.

For example you have 3 units or generators. So full generation capacity is limited to 66% of the max capacity of the 3 units, so N = 2. In the event 1 of the 3 units fails, the other two pick up the slack. So N +1 in this case = 2 + 1 = 3.

N - 1 is deficit. Meaning your demand exceeds capacity and everything goes dark.

Why don't you come over to Mike Holt's Code Forum and discuss your ideas with peers and see what you really know. It is a professional forum for electrical professionals with over 40,000 members whose membership contains 1000's of engineers, and 10,000's electricians. You will find me over there, I am 1 of 12 moderators a moderator and instructor for Mike. Give it a try and see what you think.

[greenHouse]

No I don't have any clue what so ever, only worked for AEP for 10 years as a substation and transmission engineer, and still work work for several utilities on contract basis doing the same thing today

No, you really don't seem to.

Which category of operation is "hot standby"? What is "Demand response" or "Load as a Resource"? What are "spinning reserves", "non-spinning reserves", and what is the difference? And how many of =those= are "hot standby"? What does it cost, in MWh for spinning, non-spinning, and DR resource? What does it cost, in terms of fuel, for each category? What is the response time requirement for each category?

You =were= a PE in Oklahoma, you are not a PE in Texas where you now live. I looked, though the Texas database might somehow be out of date. You were a Relay Control and Substation =Technician= in Oklahoma for one year before moving to Communications where you worked for nine more years.

Which experience in there makes you qualified to start talking about how the grid supposedly works? I don't see no "grid related" experience in there. And after you left =that= job you went into DC power plant work, which is very much NOT the grid.

[Sunking]

Come on over to Mike Holt and let's have some fun girl. Let's see what you know.

[greenHouse]

Come on over to Mike Holt and let's have some fun girl. Let's see what you know.

Please get over yourself, okay?

There's a LOT I don't know, but I don't pretend =to= know it. It would appear that you haven't a clue how the grid functions and it would have been better to just admit you don't than to get into a pissing contest with me.

Something else to consider -- I've had a lot of respect for you over the years. What do you think has happened to that respect?

[Sunking]

I've had a lot of respect for you over the years. What do you think has happened to that respect?

Over the years? Please enlighten me where our paths have crossed.

I am not the pretender here. You got caught with your N-1 remark. I suspect you picked that somewhere reading about N+1 redundancy and slipped up. N+1 redundancy is a very easy concept to understand and used for decades in power generation and communications. You are are the one giving the impression you are in electrical design, when your education and background is all programming and computer science which is great, but not electrical.

Now you you have started your own business or working for a biz that does strictly RE only. I can certainly understand your strong defense, as I would too if i was in a limited niche biz approach with only 1 flavor to offer.

[greenHouse]

Mike Holt's Code Forum.

You are =slow= some times.

You're a smart guy and a talented engineer. You just don't know all that much about solar and for reasons that are hard to explain, I happen to know many times what you do about running an electric grid.

I thought you were someone else, because the real "you" is someone I genuinely respect. When I finally figured out that you are you, let's just say that I lost a lot of the respect I had for you. So, knock it off, okay?

We really need to work this out over a beer up your end of the planet and get it out of this forum. I have to go to Waco real soon now to look over an 8KW mixed system. It would only be another two hours from Waco to Plano.

[Mike90250]

OK you two, the thread has been completely hijacked.

We can start a new section here for brawls if you want, but not in front of the new folks.

[greenHouse]

OK you two, the thread has been completely hijacked.

We can start a new section here for brawls if you want, but not in front of the new folks.

But, Daddy, I said nice things about him, too!

Yeah, I'm done with the Julie / Dereck road show. If he wants to discuss renewable energy over a beer, I'm down with that. If not, I'll add him to my "Ignore" / "Block" / "Make disappear" list. His choice.

[Sunking]

OK you two, the thread has been completely hijacked.

Mike you are right and I apologize, but I did not throw the first punch.

[greenHouse]

Dereck,

I should know better than to tell someone I'm going to ignore them -- it only invites more responses or editing of posts (as in this instance).

Grid operators DO NOT keep resources in some magical and you-never-defined "hot standby" mode just for the heck of it, nor are reserves typically kept AT a plant. Reserves AT a plant are a liability because the transmission lines OUT of the plant are a resource and you get into constraint -- too much capacity on too small a line -- and then the now-much-bigger-plant rises up the contingency planning ladder because no one keeps an entire plant just sitting there, twiddling its thumbs. That's how I knew you know nothing about grid operations -- the entire "hot standby" mess.

Different levels of reserves have different costs and degrees of responsiveness. The ISOs do contingency planning by maintaining a LAYERED collection of responses and capacities. As an event progresses, different layers are activated with different degrees of responsiveness. Some are automatic -- either Laws of Physics or automated systems -- others are manual. In the case of the Feb 2008 wind event, the system worked exactly -- =exactly= -- as it was designed to work. And it worked -- with ZERO customers involuntarily losing power -- because ERCOT has pioneered "Demand Response" / "Load as a Resource".

And while my background =is= software engineering, one of the great things about that former employer of mine is that they work on all the world's biggest problems -- including inventing the Smart Grid. The work I did that produced most of my body of knowledge in grid management was an improvement over a project called "GridWise" that came out of the Pacific Northwest National Labs. During our analysis of GridWise, we found a number of major limitations in both GridWise and what I call "SmartGrid 2.0", most of which I can't even tell you about due to non-disclosure agreements. But if you'd like to see what I was busily improving, here's a website --

http://gridwise.pnl.gov/

And here's the page that lists my former employer's role --

http://gridwise.pnl.gov/docs/participants_roles_2008.pdf

Between 2007 and 2009 ("Inclusive"), I submitted approximately 35 invention disclosures all related to grid management, some as a solo inventor, others as a member of a patent team. Our major contribution to the state of the art was working on "Load as balancing energy" with =no= communications channel requirements. It was a pretty neat trick. And I'm not defining or explaining any of that for you either. I spent four hours explaining the concept to a patent attorney, and that was four hours enough for me.

The beer offer still stands.