Trouble in Hawaii's Solar Paradise

[Sunking]

I agree. The trouble is getting people to build the darn nukes and use that fuel.

Hell we got 50 years worth sitting around doing nothing in plants now sitting in water waiting to be buried in some damn useless man made cave. .

[SunEagle]

Hell we got 50 years worth sitting around doing nothing in plants now sitting in water waiting to be buried in some damn useless man made cave. .

I guess people forgot about the recycling path. Go figure.

[bonaire]

They've been using some of the depleted fuel in rounds shot out of A10s over the last couple decades... Not the kind of recycling I'd want, though.

What can we do to get DoE on board with a recycling program? Congress seems too dumb and self absorbed to do anything. I really think good grid supplied electricity and cheaper electric cars charging at night during lower demand cycles would be a generally good thing for our economy.

[SunEagle]

They've been using some of the depleted fuel in rounds shot out of A10s over the last couple decades... Not the kind of recycling I'd want, though.

What can we do to get DoE on board with a recycling program? Congress seems too dumb and self absorbed to do anything. I really think good grid supplied electricity and cheaper electric cars charging at night during lower demand cycles would be a generally good thing for our economy.

Nukes are the way to go for the majority of power generation capabilities. As for getting Congress to understand that and go do it you better be careful on how you ask them. They may find another use for that A10 ammo.

[Sunking]

What can we do to get DoE on board with a recycling program?

Twist the arm of whatever President is in office. 5 days before the 1976 election POTUS Ford signed an XO temporally suspending nuclear fuel reprocessing. On April 7th POTUS Carter signed an XO ending reprocessing all nuclear fuel.

All it takes is a sitting POTUS to reverse the XO. There is nothing Congress or Senate can do about it.

[russ]

You have no idea of what you are talking about and showing great ignorance about conventional power generation.

Coal, Correct
natural gas totally wrong - can and do spin up rapidly - especially if held in hot standby
nuclear Correct
take many hours to bring up to operating temp and get running. You just don't start them up like an engine. They have to be fueled up, hot ready to go in an instant.
From cold a turbine can come up relatively quickly - not all that good to to a turbine but can be and is done.

Standby turbines are rolling and hot - easy to ramp up though the fuel consumption is higher.

A big waste with standby gas turbines is they are open cycle - the least efficient configuration.
.

comments in bold.

[Sunking]

comments in bold.

Russ I am referring to natural gas boilers. You are correct a boiler that is hot can be spun up quickly, but the point is the boilers have to be hot and ready to go in standby. That means the fire is always going and consuming fuel. Excess pressure is vented to atmosphere until rerouted to the turbines.

[bonaire]

Realistically - how long from cold to hot/ready state for an NG boiler? 10 minutes? 10 hours?

The demand-response regulations have certain costs associated with plants not able to come online when demand requires it. But what about the daily forcasting the network does everyday? I just don't see 24x7 on-standby NG plants just sitting there spinning because they are unable to do proper forcasting. That's the realm of Homer Simpson running these places. I think when you say "always" you literally mean that all NG plants are always running like a Trucker sitting in a parking lot overnight idling to keep warm. The truck engine is hot but not pulling fuel like it is when driving 65mph.

The power consumed by a standby NG plant would seem to me to be far less than a fully-online NG plant. Keeping warm and spinning is one thing but under load while on the grid seems something else. Can we review FERC or other documents that describe how all this works? I like to learn, others do too. There are a lot of "this is how it is" statements flowing about - without much backing documentation.

[russ]

What I am familiar with for hot standby are gas turbines - normally operated in open cycle configuration for this use - meaning no boiler as that would come into play in closed cycle.

No boiler should be brought up quickly - very bad for the life cycle of the equipment.

[Sunking]

Realistically - how long from cold to hot/ready state for an NG boiler? 10 minutes? 10 hours?

Hours, not minutes.

[SunEagle]

Realistically - how long from cold to hot/ready state for an NG boiler? 10 minutes? 10 hours?

The demand-response regulations have certain costs associated with plants not able to come online when demand requires it. But what about the daily forcasting the network does everyday? I just don't see 24x7 on-standby NG plants just sitting there spinning because they are unable to do proper forcasting. That's the realm of Homer Simpson running these places. I think when you say "always" you literally mean that all NG plants are always running like a Trucker sitting in a parking lot overnight idling to keep warm. The truck engine is hot but not pulling fuel like it is when driving 65mph.

The power consumed by a standby NG plant would seem to me to be far less than a fully-online NG plant. Keeping warm and spinning is one thing but under load while on the grid seems something else. Can we review FERC or other documents that describe how all this works? I like to learn, others do too. There are a lot of "this is how it is" statements flowing about - without much backing documentation.

You forget that most of the generating plants in the US use coal and oil. The natural gas plants are relatively new due to the lower cost of fuel. The other type of plants can't be ramped up quickly like dumping more coal into a train engine. Those giant boilers have to come up slowly so they can't spin those turbines very fast for hours after ramping up the boilers.

[russ]

What percentage of the hot standby in the US is boiler based vs gas turbine based? I would expect nearly 100% is either gas turbine or hydro.

[inetdog]

What percentage of the hot standby in the US is boiler based vs gas turbine based? I would expect nearly 100% is either gas turbine or hydro.

In addition to hot standby, there are "peaker" plants that are brought up on a relatively predictable schedule when the base load generation will not be sufficient.
In the US these are mainly gas turbine also, but because they are not operated full time their amortized cost per kWh is relatively high even though NG is an inexpensive fuel. Secondary uses of the waste heat, such as for steam production, are not economical for plants that are not run nearly continuously.
Gas turbine plants can generate power on demand very quickly, and so are also used for hot standby, but the secondary uses which increase efficiency are not so flexible.

Hydro, including pumped storage hydro, can be ramped up much quicker than a boiler-based plant, but the best still take at least a few minutes to get up to full power because of the inertial of both the turbines and the water running through the penstocks, etc. It takes awhile to open the valves. Shutting them down is also a slower process than a gas turbine to avoid damage.

[bonaire]

Hydro has standby-mode too and can open a tube in minutes to get another turbine going. I'm familiar with the NIagara Power Project and it has 13 tubes (2.4GW in total) and not all run all the time. It also has the pumped hydro add-on. It seems that hydro standby may trump coal/NG standby in terms of reaction time. Of course, some tubes go into maintenance mode for weeks.

I guess this is why they want to see if battery-standby peaker plants or utility units could some day be cost effective for peak load management or to offset renewable flux.

[inetdog]

Hydro has standby-mode too and can open a tube in minutes to get another turbine going. I'm familiar with the NIagara Power Project and it has 13 tubes (2.4GW in total) and not all run all the time. It also has the pumped hydro add-on. It seems that hydro standby may trump coal/NG standby in terms of reaction time. Of course, some tubes go into maintenance mode for weeks.

I guess this is why they want to see if battery-standby peaker plants or utility units could some day be cost effective for peak load management or to offset renewable flux.

MagnetoHydroDynamic (MHD) generators have a very quick theoretical response, since they have no rotating parts. But they are not yet either practical or economical for large scale production.