Solar panel manufacturing plant 25mw/year

[greenHouse]

Heck with that, go to ERCOT and see what happened in Dallas and northwest texas when th ewind died and we lost all the wind generator capacity and no conventional plant was running hot standby.

What happened with STP was worse. STP is the single largest plant in Texas for N-1 planning and all 2,600 MW went buh-bye at once. There are, at all times, 2,600MW of spinning reserves just waiting on STP to drop from the grid.

The May '08 (I think that's the right month that everyone points to) problem with the wind was just an extreme down-ramp that didn't result in any loss of electric power to any customers. The demand-response loads reduced their demand and the grid stayed balanced. Here's a good paper on the subject of wind and all its problems --

http://www.ercot.com/content/meetings/rtwg/keydocs/2009/20090807-RTWG/Defining_the_Ramping_Challenge.doc

[russ]

I have read about the BPA trying to balance wind with hydro in the Columbia Basin - as I remember the comment was that it is a wild ride. Hydro turbines are not designed to ramp up and down continually.

But wind is troublesome - a not reliable source of power without storage.

This is where the point always comes up that for 1 mW of wind installed there needs to be a similar amount of very inefficient spinning reserve in operation.

The customers that were dumped to allow for the wind generation loss were probably less than thrilled. They accept an interuptible contract because cost and often than is all they can get.

The availability on nuclear plants is well documented - for wind a lot of blather is well documented.

[greenHouse]

I have read about the BPA trying to balance wind with hydro in the Columbia Basin - as I remember the comment was that it is a wild ride. Hydro turbines are not designed to ramp up and down continually.

Hydro turbines actually =are= designed to operating in a load-following manner, unless they are run-of-the-river.

The customers that were dumped to allow for the wind generation loss were probably less than thrilled. They accept an interuptible contract because cost and often than is all they can get.

That's anti-wind gibberish. Demand-response has been a very successful program in ERCOT and there is no shortage of loads willing to sign voluntary curtailment contracts.

You should read the papers ERCOT has put out on the subject rather than listening to propaganda. More significantly, you should read this summary from ERCOT after one of the more severe events (... which was a combination of load, wind and conventional generation):

Large wind ramps (Figure 4) are not comparable as reliability events with instantaneous generation failures. Conventional generation contingencies require dedicated spinning reserves and immediate response (2300 MW of ERCOT Responsive Reserve Service). Multi-hour wind ramps give the system operator time to utilize market responses, load response, supplemental reserves, or non-spinning reserves. All of these options are much cheaper than maintaining and deploying spinning reserves required for conventional generation.

That 2,300MW spinning reserve requirement (I usually mis-write that as 2,600 MW because it's the reserve requirement for STP, which is 2 x 1,285 MW) isn't for wind -- it's for nuclear.

[Sunking]

What happened with STP was worse. STP is the single largest plant in Texas for N-1 planning and all 2,600 MW went buh-bye at once. There are, at all times, 2,600MW of spinning reserves just waiting on STP to drop from the grid.

Thus is the problem with RE sources, you must have conventional reserves in hot standby at all times to make up for the sudden loss of RE supplies. That is not anti-RE hype that is fact that has repeated itself many many times. This only artificially drive sup the cost of power generation and does not offset any CO2 emissions. RE sources are too unreliable and unpredictable to count on.

The ERCOT paper you linked too makes this very clear.

[greenHouse]

Thus is the problem with RE sources, you must have conventional reserves in hot standby at all times to make up for the sudden loss of RE supplies. That is not anti-RE hype that is fact that has repeated itself many many times. This only artificially drive sup the cost of power generation and does not offset any CO2 emissions. RE sources are too unreliable and unpredictable to count on.

The ERCOT paper you linked too makes this very clear.

The ERCOT paper says no such thing, and actually says the exact opposite. A "bad" conventional outage typically takes from 500 to 2,000 MW off-line instantly. The wind ramps that have been a problem in ERCOT are typically in the 50MW per minute range.

There's a paper that I can't find at the moment that shows what happened when STP went off-line a while back, and it wasn't nice. The FP&L event in 2008 that was caused by "operator error" went entirely different than the big wind ramps (down-ramps, in particular) we have in Texas. This -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_...icity_blackout -- is what happens when a large conventional or nuclear plant loses production. As the ERCOT report points out, exactly =zero= customers in the ERCOT control region involuntarily lost power. So ... 2,500,000 customers in Florida lost power when a reactor tripped and 0.00 customers in Texas lost power when the wind died ahead of schedule at the same time load rose ahead of schedule.

The smart money, in this instance, is on distribute renewable sources.

[russ]

Quote, 'The smart money, in this instance, is on distribute renewable sources.'

What kind of stuff do you smoke there in Central Texas - must be strong!

Nobody involuntarily lost power because they were on interuptible - they are playing with words. Companies take that type of contract because guaranteed power is too expensive.
Playing with words.

Run some of this gibberish past BB & Neil sometime - see what they think. How cheap PV is etc.

[greenHouse]

Nobody involuntarily lost power because they were on interuptible - they are playing with words. Companies take that type of contract because guaranteed power is too expensive.

No, they take it because they receive a discounted rate as a 'demand response load'. In addition, if they accept a request to shed load, they are PAID while their load is shed. For some businesses which manage enough load, they are able to curtail load at no loss of functionality for the time periods in question.

Study how the grid works. ERCOT has one of the best functioning grids in the nation because of demand responsive loads.

[Mike90250]

And, this could be a condition of chosing to only buy "green" energy, you may experience 4 (or N ) outages a year with only a few (0) minutes notice, as it ebbs and varys.

[greenHouse]

And, this could be a condition of chosing to only buy "green" energy, you may experience 4 (or N ) outages a year with only a few (0) minutes notice, as it ebbs and varys.

That's always a possibility. One of the patent applications I have at the PTO deals with this very sort of issue!

I have another that deals with metering demand and supply following behavior. That's my favorite.

[Sunking]

The ERCOT paper says no such thing,

Yes it does. read the very first page. Ignore the remaining 500 pages. Julie i have figured you out. You are in biz for yourself in the RE biz, and as such only have one flavor to offer; vanilla.

[greenHouse]

Yes it does. read the very first page. Ignore the remaining 500 pages. Julie i have figured you out. You are in biz for yourself in the RE biz, and as such only have one flavor to offer; vanilla.

It wasn't a 500 page document, it was a 13 page lessons-learned presentation put out by NREL.

Here's the abstract:

[quote]On February 26, 2008, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called for an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan (EECP) at 18:41 due to a worsening imbalance between generation and load which led to a decline in system frequency. The event is of special interest, and was widely reported on in the press, because wind generation played a partial role in the event. Other load-response events, which did not involve wind generation, have not received similar attention.

Three major contributions to this event include a large ramp-down of wind generation which started at 15:00, the unexpected loss of conventional generation, and a quicker than expected evening load ramp-up. Collectively these factors led to ERCOT calling on reserve capacity, including Loads acting as a Resource (LaaR)

[Sunking]

All one needs to know is this paragraph:

It is equally unclear how frequently significant wind ramps will occur; knowing that frequency could guide the development of any new tools that might be necessary. Numerous factors can affect size, frequency, and impact of wind ramps. Changes in the installed wind resource fleet such as increased geographic diversity, governor-like response from wind turbines, better forecasting will affect their impact and consequently, the type and quantity of tools needed.

After 100 years of technology man has no answer to predict weather accurately which is the crux of RE, where does the energy come from on cloudy and low wind speed days? ERCOT has had 10 years and multiple incidents of emergencies related to unpredictable weather occurances, and they got caught with there pants down and did not have reserves on line ready to go or how to handle sudden surges causing overspeed to the grid generators. Then comes night and all solar is dead in the water and wind quits.

Last point you cannot run a generation plant N-1, it has to be N+1 for redundacy.

[Sunking]

Hydro turbines actually =are= designed to operating in a load-following manner, unless they are run-of-the-river...

You have a moot point point. Hydro can be adjusted for varying load conditions in the least amount of time if water is avaialable by opening/closing the gates (valve) in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes, but last time I checked all hydro power power damns involve a damned river or stream with a lake behind it with enough water in it to open the gates.

[russ]

I have heard my brother who was a power house operator, before he recently retired, complain about the PG&E marketing guys many times. They use the turbines as peakers and want the hydro turbines run up and down constantly to sell the last kW possible while conserving every liter of water to use later.

The turbines are perfectly balanced (adequately balanced) at the operating speed range but generally have some rough periods as they come up to speed and again as they go back down.

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. As they come up in speed you pass through the natural frequency rough areas time and again when slowing them down.

That is never good for the life of a machine.

[greenHouse]

ERCOT has had 10 years and multiple incidents of emergencies related to unpredictable weather occurances, and they got caught with there pants down and did not have reserves on line ready to go.

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

Last point you cannot run a generation plant N-1, it has to be N+1 for redundacy.

"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.

Likewise, there is no such category as "hot standby" (sounds great in movies, I'm sure), but there are all the categories that were used to far more gracefully handle the event than a similar capacity event was handled by FP&L when TWO POINT FIVE MILLION CUSTOMERS lost power.