OT: Serial Hybrids

If he was right, the nuclear power plant at Ft. Greely wouldn't have over reved and blow the bearings so may times that it was decommissioned. There is very little spinning reserve. A fraction of a percent, at best. To use the grid at full power all night will require full fuel conniption, 24/7. this will reduce the usable life of the equipment, and cause more failures requiring downtime for repairs.

The 60 hZ frequency is a balancing act between the energy supplied to the generators, and they load on them. There is no way they can be running at full power and the same load, without speeding up.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell
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In short "Horse puckey" The "Grid" [and there isn't just one] does not and can not handle PEAK at all well for long periods, and just because something can run at a higher capacity does not mean that it should be.

Do you run every where???? Or do you some times walk? It is the same issue.

Ignoring the fact that not all of the capacity that could be running, isn't, even those units on spinning reserve do not consume near the energy or power that they do when feeding load, and if you load them up, you would have to start more units to spinning reserve.

And when running maxed out, all it takes is ONE little disturbance, to cause a cascading failure (i.e. blackout).

A bigger problem is people that do not know any thing about how to operate a power plant, making technical decisions on their operation. jk

Reply to
jk

No I didn't say that, but just loping along they aren't very efficient either.

It isn't exactly the same thing, but imagine a 5500 watt gas generator supplying your house. It is 5500 watt to run the worst load you might throw at it, but it still burns through a lot of fuel just to run a 100 watt light bulb.

Most of our power plants have huge generators and are not easily reconfigured for low consumption values. It makes more sense for the plant to leave the monster running during low demand rather than trying to shut it down and then bring it back online a short time later.

If people could charge there electric vehicles during low demand times the Electric companies would be really happy to sell something that currently isn't being used very well.

Consumers Power and Detroit Edison co-built a big "battery" years ago to help address some of these problems. See:

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?id=31 This allowed them to store off-peak power and release it back into the system during high demand.

Reply to
Leon Fisk

Our local utility (Union Electric) just wrecked their pumped storage plant a couple years ago, and is now spending several hundred million $ to rebuild it. So, it must still make sense. They've got a lake on top of a mountain, and lift the water about 600 feet.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Kind of mind boggling in a way. There has to be a lot of loss in these systems. Transmission lines to and back, evaporation, friction heat/hysteresis in the pump/turbine/generators... yet they still find these useful to store off-peak generation.

There still isn't too many ways to store excess power generation I guess on a large scale.

Reply to
Leon Fisk

There are other advantages - a pumped water storage facility like that is almost "Instant On" - you could wind it up to speed and put it on the grid in under 1 minute - 10 seconds if they had a bit of advance warning and it was all set to start fast. And it can be easily brought up from a "Black Start" with the grid down - even if all the natural gas pipelines are shut down.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

I was curious and looked up the Taum Sauk pumped storage location which is the one Jon was referencing. See:

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That brochure claims that for every 3kw pumped they get 2kw back in generation.

And for anyone else still reading this thread I also found this paper:

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"IMPACTS ASSESSMENT OF PLUG-IN HYBRID VEHICLES ON ELECTRIC UTILITIES AND REGIONAL U.S. POWER GRIDS"

I've read through some of it (39 pages total) and it addresses some of the comments and questions brought up here concerning the grid. Interesting and boring reading all at the same time :)

Reply to
Leon Fisk

There is a pumped storage facility just down the road from me here in NY. The Blenheim-Gilboa power project

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's been a BIG problem for a long time.

Reply to
Steve W.

The 'grid' is sized for peaks. Generation is base load and I believe fast startup gas turbines. Wind and other sources, well they exist. Saw a mention of pumping stations. Likely devoted to local loads and the 3:2 payback tells you something about how expensive peak power can be.

Serious cash gets paid to cover peaks.

Years ago, my brother was working on a project that had to be online by July. It was a fast startup NG generation facility that made its money servicing peak loads. Union job but they lifted big stuff over head while people were working underneath. Lots of promises of bonus money if the job was done on time. Plants that can cover peaks charge much higher rates than something just churning away.

So the only generation for charging EV's that should be considered is that which churns along at all times of the day along with wind which an intelligent distribution network could find loads for during off peak.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Reply to
Wes

Well, they did, until they overfilled the upper reservoir and blew out the side. One billion gallons of water down the side of the mountain in 12 minutes, and washed away an ENTIRE state park. The utility is paying $100 million fine plus rebuilding the park at their expense.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Thanks for that info. I was curious (as I mentioned earlier) and it looked like they weren't monitoring things very well and overfilled it. I'm sure there was a lot of stuff in your local papers at the time.

I was always under the impression that these (pumped storage) were pretty rare. This was years ago, long before I had access to anything like the internet. Not very hard to find out about them now :)

Reply to
Leon Fisk

I thought Traverse City Light and Power had one but I couldn't figure out where it would fit geologically so I emailed a gent at TCLP. He replied that Consumers has a pumping station in Luddington which is where a former college mate was likely working the last time I ran into him a decade ago.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Taum Sauk was built starting in 1960. And, apparently, although they had had major problems with the control system, they just tinkered with it instead of fixing it properly, which would have cost a few thousand $. Now, the facility is off-line for years, they have been fined hundreds of millions of $, they have to rebuild an entire state park, etc. And, of course, us rate payers will pay for it all plus multi-million dollar bonuses for the executives. What a racket.

Taum Sauk was only built because they had a mini-mountain with a lake on top already. All they had to do was build up the sides some and install pipes and a turbine. I suppose there are other formations where this could be done about as easily, too.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

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