Attachment 516030
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with out clicking the video. is that meant to be kw or mw?Quote:
Originally Posted by woodPixel
Don't be pedantic!Quote:
Originally Posted by havabeer69
If Woody had meant to say megawatts then he would have said megawatts. That istallation is enough to power 380 radiators - just try to imagine 380 radiators massed!
haveabeerQuote:
Originally Posted by havabeer69
The video indicates it is MW. Currently they are generating 710MW with another couple of hundred MW still going in. Adjacent to this project is another installation, the largest PV project in China, being constructed and capable, they say, of 2000MWs when complete. The area beneath the panels is re-vegetated, the locals are employed to wash the panels and they generate of course, so it seems, on the face of it, to be a win. Video presenter looks very western, but clearly fluent in Chinese. Subtitles in English and Italian.
Regards
Paul
I have, in this thread, mentioned that battery power seems less likely for commercial transportation and that some other method of propulsion may be necessary. I have also suggested hydrogen power, which I have to say has been derided by both friends and colleagues at work. However:
Whistle blows in Germany for world's first hydrogen train fleet (msn.com)
Once the first moves towards new technology have been made, it all suddenly seems more plausible.
Attachment 516052
Regards
Paul
Everything is impossible, until it isn't.
It can't be done, until it is.
I heard these repeatedly throughout the pandemic. As a society we shattered every preconception we had about how out economy worked, how we work, how people would/wouldn't behave, how systems were believed to fail catastrophically and didn't (I was a bit of an enthusiast on this one).
Same with the renewables arguments.... it all seems so HARD, until the stuff actually occurs... then we go on with life as normal and routinely accept the previously impossible.
I really do try to have the most ardent hope that people can be visionary on these issues. The issues feel so important.
Hydrogen will be a HUGE part of the storage solution.
Agreed. Whatever did we do until the Earth became spherical?Quote:
Originally Posted by woodPixel
Re hydrogen: there's certainly enough of it available for a good long while. Just a matter of sorting out the green side of it. It will happen.
It won't be until there is enough alternative energy to produce it and it definitely won't be used to power ICE's, that is a definite dead end and when Hydrogen is spoken of there needs to be some definition of how it is going to be used as a lot of people think of it powering ICE's.Quote:
Originally Posted by woodPixel
As I understand it, the hydrogen is used to generate electricity in an EV, so no ICE as suchQuote:
Originally Posted by Chris Parks
I think that is the case with the Alstom train, but passenger cars may not have the same capability as you need roof space for the solar panels. That is until the whole car bodywork becomes a solar panel. Trouble there is that even a mild bingle may render your vehicle immobile.Quote:
Originally Posted by FenceFurniture
Regards
Paul
Solar Panels are not required. That's why the future of H2 is so big (as long as it's green). It's pretty much go anywhere with a big enough tank. Now on container ships you can add a huge amount of panels as well – they hardly need to be aerodynamic.
In the linked instance you are correct but there is some activity led by Toyota and BMW to use it in ICE cars as well and in discussions about Hydrogen it can be confusing as to how the vehicle is powered either with an ICE or a fuel cell and it is the latter that is the future of Hydrogen. The UK are already in the process of rolling out Hydrogen networks to replace natural gas in homesQuote:
Originally Posted by FenceFurniture
(1) hydrogen replace natural gas in uk - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uNKPDREa-Q&ab_channel=SkillBuilder
I can't see a big use of panels on a container ship because they would have to removed for loading. A car carrier, tanker etc yes they might work.Quote:
Originally Posted by FenceFurniture
I am hesitant to include too much regarding The Russo Ukrainian war but the threats to their large Nuclear power station, Zaporizhzhia, does emphasis the vulnerability of the Nukes in times of crisis. The following report describes the potential for catastrophe. There may still be one unit running (it was disconnected for a time) but once the last unit is shut down it is still essential to maintain cooling supplies to the core. However, if they are no longer generating power themselves, they have to import elecctricity from the grid. It would normally come from a nearby coal fired generator, but where there were once three lines coming in, there is now only one. The other two have been disconnected.
All power stations have emergency diesel generators to enable units to be safely run down and stored. This is mainly for cooling and other essential supplies. In a Nuke, these requirements are far more critical and while Zaporizhzhia has a diesel (maybe more than one) they need diesel fuel too. If that should fail.........
There is also some talk that Russia may install lines to Russia instead of Ukraine, but I don't know how likely or feasible that is: It may be media hype.
Shelling disconnects Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from Ukraine grid (msn.com)
Regards
Paul
Tripped over another Battery idea today.
Cheap, high capacity, and fast: New aluminum battery tech promises it all | Ars Technica
An interesting read.
Obviously this isn't for ones car, but it would be interesting for Big Batteries.
There is another I touched on earlier called a "flow" battery and an Iron-sulphide battery.
These giant mass storage units, being dirt cheap, might get us somewhere towards suburb or building-level solutions. They don't need to move, so weights not an issue, plus they can soak up all the locally generated excess power during the day and release it locally too, which is good.
If we can plonk these in the big cities to start, we can ween ourselves off coal bit-by-bit, then more-by-more.
Despite the emotion in all this, I don't think the real plan, right now, is for 100% coal eradication. Obviously we can't do that this year, or next, or maybe in 5 or 10, but each step is a lowering. Imagine if we could lower coal use by 90% over 5 or 10 years. Everyone would think this is a "win".
Nobody would say that's a bad thing.
Next we need to plant 100 trillion trees and fix the ocean plastic problem :)
His Enormousness might.Quote:
Originally Posted by woodPixel
careful what you wish for WP.Quote:
Originally Posted by woodPixel
coal fired power stations take around a full day to ramp up to full output or ramp down to zero.
the grid frequency is principally maintained by what is known as spinning reserve -- historically spinning reserve would be around 25% of a station's nominated output.
In more more recent times the spinning reserve has been redefined to be around 10% of rated output.
However, recent breakdowns in the coal power stations have demonstrated the risk of reducing spinning reserve to such a low level.
At the point where coal generated electricity represents less than about 60% of total electricity output -- electricity output defined so as to include the spinning reserve -- the economics of operating ANY coal fired generation will become problematic.
I envision a future where coal generation is only viable for that portion of the average day where wind power is not available.
The alternative to coal will be fast starting natural gas (another fossil fuel) turbines -- but with the east coast's gas reserves being largely exported, we all know that the cost of gas, if it is even available, has become.
Given all that it will take more than the battery in a BEV connected to a smart meter to provide grid balance.
As I've previously said in this thread, on a national basis, Australia needs the ability to generate 3 days worth of electricity for the sun's not shining and the wind is not blowing.
Given that the demand for electricity is expected to double (or is it more?) over the near future, the need to include the charging of a fleet of BEVs would increase the storage requirement (measured in thousands of TWh) to around 6 days worth at current consumption, perhaps more.
To be economic, any really large battery will need to be made of dirt.
The best battery technology I've seen so far is a carbon heat storage battery that produces electricity by allowing the emitted "heat" photons to pass through a reflecting solar collector. I believe the electrical efficiency of such a heat battery is around 50%
couple of things about these statements.Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
the ramp up ramp down is not a full day. its dependant on the generator, so i'll go with ours... our default is 6MW a minute. we've also gone through trials and can go down as low at 180Mw but the normal low is 200MW with the upper cap being 660MW. so the basic math is:
660 MW - 200MW = 460MW
460MW / 6MW min = 76 minutes
so it takes us a bit over an hour to go from max out put to our lowest rated output. it does play havoc with metal rates of change and other things but it's pretty much the norm. 1MW a minute or 3MW a minute is the preferred rate but we have to play to AEMO's rules and its what we're rated for. Getting down to zero takes all of about 1 second with the press of the red button. Starting back up is its own kettle of fish as it depends on the temperature of the boiler/drum/turbine.
spinning reserve is a station specific thing and is set to what % you'd like. its actually a terrible thing for efficiency and so the lower the better. its also not based on the station's out put but a sliding figured based on the steam pressure needed for a certain amount of MW. So if we're at 18MPa of steam we'll have 1.8MPa of steam in reserve (this is based on the volume in the throttle valve steam chest) and will give a certain MW figure. So a 660MW unit does not always keep a 10% value in reserve, we're not going to have 66MW (10% of 660) up our sleeve if we're running at 300MW as it would be a huge inefficiency loss
I'm really looking forward to the governments renewable gas they keep spruiking with Ad's on youtube.
Illuminating discussions!
I sent this to my kids. It's a wake up call... Energy bills to soar for millions as price cap hiked to £3,549
Some of the horror stories of truly hideous gas bills and cost blowouts in households.... Reddit Discussion on article
Would an alternative alternative be to revert to coal gas, rather than natural gas, Ian?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
Hydrogen: A long way to go, but a start:
Green hydrogen Australia | null | Siemens Energy Global (siemens-energy.com)
Regards
Paul
IanQuote:
Originally Posted by ian
The term "spinning reserve" had a more significant relevance in the days before the competitive market was developed around twenty five years ago. The "spinning reserve" was dictated by each individual state and I remember figures of 2000MW being bandied around. This would have been a state wide reserve and not necessarily based on an individual station output.
Today the availability of power is not dictated by AEMO, as the East Coast overall controller, but by price. Consequently any "spinning reserve", to quote that old terminology, is only there by default, because surplus power is dictated by price. This is why generators during that extreme wholesale price excursion a few weeks back could be ordered to generate. It was the default position should the price point become unrealistic. It is the fundamental failing of the competitive market. I should point out that collusion amongst generators is expressly forbidden with very high penalties applicable should there be any proven instances. When the competitive market was first established other markets were observed and the UK market in particular was watched as there had been some scurrilous activity there during their early days.
As price dictates almost everything it is the reason that fossil fired plants should not be made uneconomic before reliable renewables can reasonably take their place. Again it is why, to my mind, storage of electricity should be the primary mantra today.
Just as a ray of hope for retail electricity prices, they should stabilise a little through Spring and we are already seeing much lower wholesale figures. However, while this gives a window of opportunity through the next three months of milder weather, the price issue will return with a vengeance though Summer should the lessons have not been learnt and acted upon.
Regards
Paul
This is on the ABC tonight.
Quite the saga.
Seems the banks won't touch it, so it doesn't bode well for other similar situations.
Vertical integration with overseas funding looks to be the only way coal plants have a future... Unless they become government owned?
WA'''s biggest private power station moves to take over loss-making, Indian-owned coal mine - ABC News
not reallyQuote:
Originally Posted by GraemeCook
From memory, coal gas was produced by heating coal to produce a mixture of hydrocarbon gases -- principally CH4 (methane) and C3H8 (ethylene), H2 and CO (carbon monoxide).
It was the CO that made coal gas the suicide method of choice.
I don't recall if coal gas is more or less calorificly efficient than methane -- aka natural gas.
Using fossil carbon -- in the coal -- to produce coal gas which in turn is used to produce electricity is not particularly efficient.
To say nothing about the greenhouse intensity of coal gas.
TL;DR
no
so what you are really saying is that under the current pricing model the current coal fired stations expect to be paid to retain any spinning reserve.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushmiller
This is not an unreasonable ask -- at least from the perspective of the coal station operator, who is burning coal (the primary variable input cost) to maintain boiler pressure so that the spinning reserve can kick-in if required. The system [of spinning] works across a state-owned electricity generation network, but mostly fails when individual stations have been sold to profit maximising market operators.
The "fix" might end up becoming payments to the privately owned coal dependent electricity generators that cover their variable cost above those required to keep the lights on at night (when solar output is zero) -- talk about money for nothing on sunny days or when the wind is blowing.
And the payments (for essentially nothing) will do just send AUS's CO2 emissions even higher
I think you have both nailed it. But I would go further - the thermal power stations must be paid to maintain a specified spinning reserve. The alternative is to increase price volatility, possibly to a catastrophic level.Quote:
Originally Posted by ian
Classic economics: price is established by supply and demand. Increase demand and prices rise, decrease supply and prices rise, and vice versa. And with solar and wind power supply is determined by quite variable and uncontrollable natural forces. When it is sunny and/or windy we can expect high levels of electricity availability and on a still night only that which the thermal generators can supply. Ironically, causing high prices when demand is at its lowest! This is a recipe for increasing volatility.
Logically, the thermal producers should provide a minimal load to minimise this volatility. But it is not in their best interests to do so without compulsion. If they simply reduce supply of a product with notoriously inelastic demand then prices will rise substantially. And there are very few producers. A simple wink and a nod or two "To save all that terrible pollution - you close Plant X and we will close Plant Y". Now ramp up the publicity about how we are saving the planet; a few workers might suffer, but its the big picture."
It sounds dramatic, but it is exactly what happened in California 20 years ago.
its not quite "you must be paid for spinning reserve"
I'm pretty sure AEMO state "you have to have a system in place for frequency deviation control and response" (it's actually called FCAS and stations can opt in or out of this but there is a payment from AEMO that goes along with it for opting in) which leaves it up to the station on how they wish to handle it, most thermal stations will have a small back up of steam pressure they can use to quick generate some load, but it really does leave it up to the business to decide how it wants to do it, you could have a 40MW battery sitting out the back and use that as your response tool and not burn as much coal maintaining your spinning reserve. sometimes for testing and other things you have to call AEMO and tell them you're turning FCAS off as you need the steady load and don't want them driving you up or down in mega watts.
Here is another brilliant idea that gets us one step closer...
Out of thin air: new solar-powered invention creates hydrogen fuel from the atmosphere | Hydrogen power | The Guardian
Here is something to add to the thought-mix: California Avoids Blackouts, But Some Cities Didn’t Get the Message - BLOOMBERG
and here is something to turn thy pubes grey! Bloomberg - Energy Trading Stressed by Margin Calls of $1.5 Trillion
This is something which in some ways is now starting to happen in parts of remote Australia, but could happen in the near future more often.
A small village in Germany which is now off grid, powering their needs via a wind farm, which started very small, solar PV and bio-gas to provide heating for the village.
This German village managed to go off grid and become energy self-sufficient | DW News - YouTube
Mick.
I have posted similar thoughts earlier in this thread for isolated towns and communities, it eliminates a lot of marginal parts of the grid and should be cost effective and more reliable and I am confident this is what will happen.
Hi ChrisQuote:
Originally Posted by Chris Parks
You may wish to view the video again.
The village might be self sufficient energy wise, but the village itself is still very much connected to the grid.
The wind turbines produce many more (perhaps 5000) times the electricity the village consumes, exporting the excess energy generated to the German grid means that there is still a high capacity grid connection to the village.
What I took away was by allowing the village's residents to become "shareholders" in the wind farm, opposition to the turbines went away.
Yes the Germans do things slightly differently to Australians, but this is to be expected as their villages are much closer together and their population density makes ours look sparse.
That village had their wind turbine system kick started by a couple (farmers) who paid for the first 4 turbines, then other villagers came on board and raised money to purchase another turbine. I believe it is somewhere around 50 wind turbines at the moment.
My brother in-law lives in a small village in Germany and they are doing a similar thing. We visited in 2013, we stayed with them for some time. I noted the proximity of a couple of wind turbines to the village and remarked that it wouldn't be possible to do this so close in Australia. His reply was along the lines of; "well once villagers started to own the turbines, noise issues and other issues went out the window."
At times we were walking to the local sports field, where above the changing rooms is a restaurant; delicious food. I noted that the local farmer had constructed a new shed on his land since our last visit and that it seemed that the roof design was made with solar panels being in the right direction and vertical alignment for their latitude. The answer was interesting. The locals after taking up ownership of a few wind turbines, turned to solar PV cells on rooftops. As the village is effectively a grouping of tightly squeezed in 100 to 180 year old houses, rooftop space is certainly PV cell unfriendly. The solution: approach the local farmer and offer to build a new shed with his money and their money. The collective will then furnish the rooftop with PV cells and everyone in the village should be able to benefit if they contribute.
This they did, the rooftop has slightly over 300, 200W solar panels on it's main roof, with another 180, 200W panels on the secondary roof. Let me tell you, that is a serious bit of generating power when the sun is shining. Almost non-existent power bills for many in the village. By the way, that shed is pretty massive, but I'm sure you've figured that out.
If you look at the rooftop behind the local mayor in the video, you will see the kind of solar PV cells and how they do it in Germany, no space and if there is so much as a square centimetre of space, it will be covered with a panel.
Mick.
Ian, yes I noted it was still connected but I think that will go away in the future. The only reason the isolated towns are connect to the grid is because central generation was the only way practical way to supply power. Now with battery technology making local storage & generation possible there will be no reason to run kilometres of copper wire which in a lot of cases is unreliable and upkeep intensive. Local grids have been around for a while now though specifically for those reasons and there are a few in WA.
in isolated grids.... who pays for the upkeep of the equipment?
its also well and good for small reginal towns, but throw in a small city with a couple of small commercial and industrial estates and a hospital (one of those places that really shouldn't be with out electricity) and it starts to become a bit more complex.
our local pub/hotel owner chucked a bunch of panels on a number of years ago, I actually got to talk to him one day and asked about them. He said his electricity bills where around $100k a year, but the amount of panels he could get on the roof could totally offset his usage, but it was a cost of $400,000. he said it was a no brainer because in 4 years time he would basically have a zero dollar electricity bill (price rises may have ruled that out now) so it was a great investment for him. can see how he shoe horned them on to take advantage of the north facing aspect.Quote:
Originally Posted by Optimark
Attachment 516843
for those in NSW google sixmaps. its a government funded map that poops all over google maps for clarity case in point the same shot but with google
Attachment 516844
radar view doesn't even show the panels yet street view does??
Attachment 516845
I have no idea but who pays for the mini grids already in operation in WA?Quote:
Originally Posted by havabeer69
The case for a large grid relies heavily on stability. A system with, say, fifty generators is less likely to suffer loss of power (but nowhere near impossible) than one with a small number of generators. In the case of a storm hitting the solar panels connected to a small grid you may be out of business very quickly: "One flash and you're ash!" to quote a hackneyed power station phrase.
There is an economy of scale supposedly. A stand alone solar system would be fine providing you have back up supplies in case of failure. All hospitals, for example, have a back up diesel generator as some of their equipment can't be allowed to fail.
Regards
Paul
I can't see any future for a mini grid that relies on a single source of power generation and while it may be a monumental shift in technology and thinking I am sure it will happen. The giant solar field being proposed in the NT for energy export to Singapore must also be subject to damage caused by cyclones, lightening etc so they must have a risk strategy in place but of course the scale is far bigger.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushmiller
That's also a long standing practice for any company with an IT room, going back to the 1970s. I forget how frequently we used to run a drill – probably every 3 months. Presumably they make more use of a UPS these days, given the widespread use of "miniature" computers, but larger rooms would still need a generator.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushmiller