The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain
Discussion
PRTVR said:
It's not an infrastructure problem, the problem is generation matching demand.
Which is by no means a new problem, and has existed as long as there has been an energy grid. National Grid used to turn off coal power stations overnight because they had too much localised generation at periods of low demand, and still have the ability to trip at least 2 nuclear stations from their control room if there is excess energy behind a constraint. Wind/solar is actually easier to control in some ways because you can modulate the power from 100% to 0% in any way you want, whereas a thermal plant might be able to run only between 50% and 100% output, if you want to reduce it to less than 50% you have to take it off. Turning power up/down, and on/off is day to day stuff, it's literally the main job of the Electricity System Operator (ESO). Given as they were paying £4000/Mwh to bring power on in winter, paying £500/mwh to get rid of it is comparatively cheap!
It will incentivise storage, DSR and increase the uptake of things to enable the grid to run without much or any thermal plant - things like the synchronous units for inertia, synthetic inertia, frequency response products from batteries, etc.
Believe it or not, you're not the only one to have seen this and realised it is "sub-optimal", but it's also a problem as old as time.
Edited by Condi on Friday 2nd June 13:45
PRTVR said:
It's not an infrastructure problem, the problem is generation matching demand.
I think it will only be a short to medium term problem that'll naturally go away as demand from EVs increases.The problem won't be that we've got too much generation, but that we haven't got enough.
It won't stop them creating a consumer funded expense somewhere though.
tamore said:
no it isn't. horribly inefficient cycle
Not if the power is surplus and anyway we will need other sources of power than electricity going forward .Hydrogen ticks many boxes ..
Turning AC into DC charging battery banks then changing it back to AC is also very inefficient !!!
Making gas during summer from solar which could be stored in vast quantities for use in winter seems to be the practical answer …
Edited by Ivan stewart on Friday 2nd June 20:06
Edited by Ivan stewart on Friday 2nd June 20:07
tamore said:
Ivan stewart said:
tamore said:
nope. we need to be able to store it.
The logical solution is make hydrogen with surplus power .Don't be blinkered. The hydrogen economy is very real and it will need to be very big. It just doesn't need to include EVs.
Ivan stewart said:
Not if the power is surplus and anyway we will need other sources of power than electricity going forward .
Hydrogen ticks many boxes ..
Turning AC into DC charging battery banks then changing it back to AC is also very inefficient !!!
Making gas during summer from solar which could be stored in vast quantities for use in winter seems to be the practical answer …
Electrolysis requires DC, and fuel cells output DC. So the exact same AC/DC conversion is required. Round trip efficiency of batteries is 80-90% vs 30-40% using H2 as the energy store. So you need to be sure there’s no good alternative for that “excess energy”.Hydrogen ticks many boxes ..
Turning AC into DC charging battery banks then changing it back to AC is also very inefficient !!!
Making gas during summer from solar which could be stored in vast quantities for use in winter seems to be the practical answer …
Best bulk energy storage system is still pumped hydro which is around 80% efficient. Obviously not suitable for everywhere, but DC interconnects to Norway where they have lots of that, for example, means we can still take advantage of it.
Evanivitch said:
tamore said:
Ivan stewart said:
tamore said:
nope. we need to be able to store it.
The logical solution is make hydrogen with surplus power .Don't be blinkered. The hydrogen economy is very real and it will need to be very big. It just doesn't need to include EVs.
Evanivitch said:
So what's your alternative low-carbon solution for fertilizer and steel production?
Don't be blinkered. The hydrogen economy is very real and it will need to be very big. It just doesn't need to include EVs.
sorry, i assumed this was drifting into the H2 panacea rabbit hole. to clean up industrial processes, absolutely. at a push, perhaps as a backup fuel source to combat dunkelflaute. though i think the latter will be solved by super grids and grid scale storage.Don't be blinkered. The hydrogen economy is very real and it will need to be very big. It just doesn't need to include EVs.
tamore said:
Gary C said:
tamore said:
grid scale storage.
What grid scale storage ?Batteries, no, just no. it would take about 100,000 sites the size of the largest one in the world to provide 50% of the uK supply for 1 hour in a near Europe wind/solar lull
Liquified gasses, interesting, but no
Hydrogen ? err, ok, maybe but storage capacity big enough ?, could make Buncefield look like a village bonfire
Flywheels ?
Weights in coalmines ?
Demand control, well of course that will work
Of course storage has benefits, and is necessary but relying on Wind/Solar much greater than 80% and expecting storage and interconnectors to pick up the slack means I think we will have to have demand reduction bigger than people will be happy with.
Mixed grid.
Edited by Gary C on Saturday 3rd June 15:11
Gary C said:
Go on then, which one.
Batteries, no, just no. it would take about 100,000 sites the size of the largest one in the world to provide 50% of the uK supply for 1 hour in a near Europe wind/solar lull
I'm still all for mixed grid and the lack of a TWh storage solution, but Edwards Sanborn is now planned to be over 3GWh storage in 2024.Batteries, no, just no. it would take about 100,000 sites the size of the largest one in the world to provide 50% of the uK supply for 1 hour in a near Europe wind/solar lull
Edited by Gary C on Saturday 3rd June 15:11
Evanivitch said:
Gary C said:
Go on then, which one.
Batteries, no, just no. it would take about 100,000 sites the size of the largest one in the world to provide 50% of the uK supply for 1 hour in a near Europe wind/solar lull
I'm still all for mixed grid and the lack of a TWh storage solution, but Edwards Sanborn is now planned to be over 3GWh storage in 2024.Batteries, no, just no. it would take about 100,000 sites the size of the largest one in the world to provide 50% of the uK supply for 1 hour in a near Europe wind/solar lull
Edited by Gary C on Saturday 3rd June 15:11
We would need something at least the size of 480GW/hr, but I must say, 3GWhr is quite something.
Evanivitch said:
I'm still all for mixed grid and the lack of a TWh storage solution, but Edwards Sanborn is now planned to be over 3GWh storage in 2024.
this neatly sums it up. some are looking for power station capable storage locations. the grid has to evolve and become much more distributed. and storage along with it. i've got 50kWh parked on the drive doing sod all this weekend, and most of the working day when parked there, Condi said:
PRTVR said:
It's not an infrastructure problem, the problem is generation matching demand.
Which is by no means a new problem, and has existed as long as there has been an energy grid. National Grid used to turn off coal power stations overnight because they had too much localised generation at periods of low demand, and still have the ability to trip at least 2 nuclear stations from their control room if there is excess energy behind a constraint. Wind/solar is actually easier to control in some ways because you can modulate the power from 100% to 0% in any way you want, whereas a thermal plant might be able to run only between 50% and 100% output, if you want to reduce it to less than 50% you have to take it off. Turning power up/down, and on/off is day to day stuff, it's literally the main job of the Electricity System Operator (ESO). Given as they were paying £4000/Mwh to bring power on in winter, paying £500/mwh to get rid of it is comparatively cheap!
It will incentivise storage, DSR and increase the uptake of things to enable the grid to run without much or any thermal plant - things like the synchronous units for inertia, synthetic inertia, frequency response products from batteries, etc.
Believe it or not, you're not the only one to have seen this and realised it is "sub-optimal", but it's also a problem as old as time.
Edited by Condi on Friday 2nd June 13:45
ks. The boilers were banked to keep them hot, the turbines were kept hot too so that an early morning fast run up could be achieved then up to full load within a couple of hours if not less.And as for the Grid Operator having the ability to trip one or two nuke plants off in case of over supply from wind or solar, where the f
k did you get that little gem from, more bks. There is absolutley no way they would "trip off" one, let alone two nukes just for the sake of there being too much sun or too much wind, firstly these big nukes are giving genuine inertia to the grid, where as wind and solar do not, and Grid would never ever want to lose that inertia. Not only that but do you know how long it takes to go critical on a nuke after it has been tripped off, do a bit of homework, and come back and tell us how long and why?Nukes are base load plants, theres no way Grid would be tripping them off, everything else would be turned down before tripping any nukes.
The only time that a nuke might get tripped by grid is if there is a major disturbance on the grid that the nuke might be party to that disturbance but doesnt realise. Normally if there is a disturbance on the grid large enough to affect the nuke then it will either trip itself off from within its own safety systems or the nuke operator could trip it, or it could be shut down (shut down being totally different to a trip).
tamore said:
Evanivitch said:
I'm still all for mixed grid and the lack of a TWh storage solution, but Edwards Sanborn is now planned to be over 3GWh storage in 2024.
this neatly sums it up. some are looking for power station capable storage locations. the grid has to evolve and become much more distributed. and storage along with it. i've got 50kWh parked on the drive doing sod all this weekend, and most of the working day when parked there, The low hanging fruit for V2H is to avoid STOR usage. And several STOR sites are already switching to battery Systems.
phumy said:
NG did not "turn off" the coal power stations over night, they were what was called "two shifted", so grid would call them off and they would ramp down in load in the normal way, these plants cannot just be "turned off" thats complete bks. The boilers were banked to keep them hot, the turbines were kept hot too so that an early morning fast run up could be achieved then up to full load within a couple of hours if not less.
And as for the Grid Operator having the ability to trip one or two nuke plants off in case of over supply from wind or solar, where the fk did you get that little gem from, more bks. There is absolutley no way they would "trip off" one, let alone two nukes just for the sake of there being too much sun or too much wind, firstly these big nukes are giving genuine inertia to the grid, where as wind and solar do not, and Grid would never ever want to lose that inertia. Not only that but do you know how long it takes to go critical on a nuke after it has been tripped off, do a bit of homework, and come back and tell us how long and why?
Nukes are base load plants, theres no way Grid would be tripping them off, everything else would be turned down before tripping any nukes.
The only time that a nuke might get tripped by grid is if there is a major disturbance on the grid that the nuke might be party to that disturbance but doesnt realise. Normally if there is a disturbance on the grid large enough to affect the nuke then it will either trip itself off from within its own safety systems or the nuke operator could trip it, or it could be shut down (shut down being totally different to a trip).
Thanks, but I really don't need the advice, it is literally the day job. 2 shifting is the same as turning a coal power station off, in that its output goes to 0mw for a period of time. Yes its still hot, but it's shut down and then comes on again when required. Obviously any instructions to ramp down and back again are compliant with the station dynamics. The point is that NG have been managing over and under supply of power for decades, so selling power at negative prices is not unusual, even if the last weekend was a bit extreme. ks. The boilers were banked to keep them hot, the turbines were kept hot too so that an early morning fast run up could be achieved then up to full load within a couple of hours if not less.And as for the Grid Operator having the ability to trip one or two nuke plants off in case of over supply from wind or solar, where the f
k did you get that little gem from, more bks. There is absolutley no way they would "trip off" one, let alone two nukes just for the sake of there being too much sun or too much wind, firstly these big nukes are giving genuine inertia to the grid, where as wind and solar do not, and Grid would never ever want to lose that inertia. Not only that but do you know how long it takes to go critical on a nuke after it has been tripped off, do a bit of homework, and come back and tell us how long and why?Nukes are base load plants, theres no way Grid would be tripping them off, everything else would be turned down before tripping any nukes.
The only time that a nuke might get tripped by grid is if there is a major disturbance on the grid that the nuke might be party to that disturbance but doesnt realise. Normally if there is a disturbance on the grid large enough to affect the nuke then it will either trip itself off from within its own safety systems or the nuke operator could trip it, or it could be shut down (shut down being totally different to a trip).
As for the other points, I'm not going to elaborate but I guarantee the control room at National Grid can trip one or more nukes if required. Yes they are going to turn other things down first, but a certain station or stations can be tripped remotely/automatically if needed (mainly in case of a line failure). How do I know? The instructions from NG to the station and visa versa come via my desk!
Edited by Condi on Sunday 4th June 11:37
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