Natural gas plants having trouble competing with solar?

[DanKegel]

The flow of electricity is always toward the least resistance. You excess power is probably consumed close to your home by your neighbor but as it passes from your grid connection transformer to someone else's it goes through another transformer which creates losses. There are additional losses along the way the can reduce the available power actually being use to run something. The bigger the system (grid) the more losses which can add up significantly depending on the quality of the grid in the area.

Feel like quantifying that loss? I'll bet it's not all that big.

[jflorey2]

Yes it will be reduced but not by 10%. Some fossil fuel is used to keep the generating plant at a warm idle. That is very inefficient and still produces CO2.

Agreed. However, at some point, when enough excess generation (including solar) is available, that generating plant is put into cold shutdown. And at that point you see significant reductions.

[Sunking]

I don't think you're quite on the same page. If 10% of load is served by solar during the daytime, the daytime fuel burn may well be reduced.

No you just live in a land of Make Believe and Fantasy. If you were talking about an internal combustion engine with a Throttle, then you have a moot point but not much of one.

But guess what? Utilities do not use ICE with the exception of Gas Turbine Engines (Jet Engines) for which are used for Peakers but not very efficient. Utilities use large boilers and heat exchanges to make 600 degree liquid steam.

Now go get your advocacy 5000 gallon pressure cooker, and see how long it takes to bring it up to pressure and then cool it down. When that cloud passes over you have a few seconds to replace the power. Not even a jet engine can come on line that fast.

[SunEagle]

Feel like quantifying that loss? I'll bet it's not all that big.

Actually it can add up to hundreds to thousands of dollars per year based on a transformer being just 2% less efficient.

[Sunking]

Feel like quantifying that loss? I'll bet it's not all that big. I like science, but I'm no expert.

You can say that again because you have no idea what you are talking about. Just making it up and wishing. It is people like you who give conservation and renewable energy production a Bad Name, and is exactly why the major majority of the country rejects your ideas. I am not the only one telling you that either now am I. JPM and other engineers have kicked your butt many times.

[SunEagle]

Agreed. However, at some point, when enough excess generation (including solar) is available, that generating plant is put into cold shutdown. And at that point you see significant reductions.

And then you run the high risk of power outages should an RE system suddenly shut down. Which they do. Large Solar inverters will shut down if any of their anti island software triggers are met.

I work on a 1MW system at a high school that would go off line just about every day. If the POCO did not have enough backup power running at the time the school and it's neighbors would have been in the dark for at least 15 minutes. Not necessarily a crisis but certainly very disruptive.

Power does not just come from thin air. You need something to generate it and Natural gas peakers my take a few minutes to start up while larger plants take hours to start up from a cold shutdown.

[DanKegel]

Actually it can add up to hundreds to thousands of dollars per year based on a transformer being just 2% less efficient.

2% losses don't sound bad at all. If they were, the existing distribution system for fossil-fired electricity would be impractical by your standard.

[DanKegel]

And then you run the high risk of power outages should an RE system suddenly shut down.

Which brings us back to automatic demand management, as well as energy storage in dams, batteries, trains, and thermal systems. There are many ways one can design a grid to ride out short outages.

Consider a city with enough of these storage and load shifting methods to ride through the shortest night of the year in a very windy and sunny June.
Assume that that 12 hours of storage gave enough warning to let them do a full shutdown of the fossil fuel fired plants, for that one night.
Would the city not use less fossil fuel that night?

[SunEagle]

I agree that there should be a surge in research to find the best and lowest cost energy storage device. Then solar and all RE would be much more stable and see less short time outages.

[J.P.M.]

And then you run the high risk of power outages should an RE system suddenly shut down. Which they do. Large Solar inverters will shut down if any of their anti island software triggers are met.

I work on a 1MW system at a high school that would go off line just about every day. If the POCO did not have enough backup power running at the time the school and it's neighbors would have been in the dark for at least 15 minutes. Not necessarily a crisis but certainly very disruptive.

Power does not just come from thin air. You need something to generate it and Natural gas peakers my take a few minutes to start up while larger plants take hours to start up from a cold shutdown.

And this all may point to the holy grail of safe, cost effective and scalable energy storage. Sure would make a lot of life less frenetic for plant personnel scrambling every time the area irradiance changes.

[jflorey2]

And then you run the high risk of power outages should an RE system suddenly shut down. Which they do. Large Solar inverters will shut down if any of their anti island software triggers are met.

That's the problem the Smart Inverter Working Group is addressing via Rule 21. Rule 21 is a new set of rules that specifically do NOT shut down when the grid glitches. They were developed due to the experience of POCO's in places like Hawaii that have a large amount of solar penetration, and are currently being rolled out in Hawaii, Arizona and California. As the overall population of inverters becomes more compliant to Rule 21 due to new installs and retrofits, that problem goes away.

Power does not just come from thin air. You need something to generate it and Natural gas peakers my take a few minutes to start up while larger plants take hours to start up from a cold shutdown.

Yep. And you always need them. But as solar generation increases you need fewer of them operating (or on hot standby) at any given time.

[DanKegel]

You can say that again because you have no idea what you are talking about. Just making it up and wishing. It is people like you who give conservation and renewable energy production a Bad Name, and is exactly why the major majority of the country rejects your ideas.

Major majority? As opposed to the minor majority?

Looking at

http://www.gallup.com/poll/190319/americans-believe-2015-record-warm-split-why.aspx

it seems more agree with me than with you about climate change at the moment.

[SunEagle]

That's the problem the Smart Inverter Working Group is addressing via Rule 21. Rule 21 is a new set of rules that specifically do NOT shut down when the grid glitches. They were developed due to the experience of POCO's in places like Hawaii that have a large amount of solar penetration, and are currently being rolled out in Hawaii, Arizona and California. As the overall population of inverters becomes more compliant to Rule 21 due to new installs and retrofits, that problem goes away.

Yep. And you always need them. But as solar generation increases you need fewer of them operating (or on hot standby) at any given time.

Most of the anti-island triggers are concerned with voltage, frequency and phase angle issues. Not just the grid going down. With more unstable grid power from RE these triggers can easily be met causing the inverter to disconnect and stop production.

You would hope there would be less hot standby but somehow a plant just sitting there waiting for RE to fail seems like a loss to the people who own them. So like some of the nuclear plants I would expect to see natural gas plants that sit idle would probably just shut down for good.

What I am surprised about Hawaii is the lack of any interest in using geo thermal energy to generate power. They are sitting on top of a hot spot like Iceland is.

[sensij]

You should probably read more about the standard jflorey mentioned if you want to comment productively about it. The triggers you mentioned, and how they are handled, is what it is addressing.

[SunEagle]

You are correct. It looks like a number of the older triggers are being evaluated and improved.

Thank you for hitting me on the head and bringing me back to reality.

[SunEagle]

Major majority? As opposed to the minor majority?

Looking at

http://www.gallup.com/poll/190319/americans-believe-2015-record-warm-split-why.aspx

it seems more agree with me than with you about climate change at the moment.

I think most people believe the climate is changing. It is just some of us don't believe the major activator is due to human activity of releasing CO2.

[SunEagle]

2% losses don't sound bad at all. If they were, the existing distribution system for fossil-fired electricity would be impractical by your standard.

Remember that costs due to efficiency losses at the transformer owned by the consumer is paid by the consumer. The losses in the POCO's transformers is just passed along to the customer by adding it to the delivery cost. Not much of an incentive for the POCO to make any improvements to their infrastructure if it brings in revenue.

[J.P.M.]

Major majority? As opposed to the minor majority?

Looking at

http://www.gallup.com/poll/190319/americans-believe-2015-record-warm-split-why.aspx

it seems more agree with me than with you about climate change at the moment.

How did you get from a discussion about energy sources, distribution and standby losses to what is, IMO only, a misstatement of the sense, if not the results of a poll dealing with what the public believes about the causes of possible climate change ?

BTW, public opinion, like innuendo, does not always coincide with facts, causes or reality. Science, which you claim to like, but also claim no particular expertize about, needs proof, not press. Public opinion does not quality as proof - at least not yet.