Energy Storage Replace Gas Plants

[Coffeeguyzz + 454]

Mr. Marcin

While I completely agree with your numbers regarding the astronomical cost of battery-sourced electricity, I would point out that your figure of $3 million per megawatt capital expense for combined cycle is triple the actual cost.

Even Lazard (also too high) pegs building expense at slightly above $1 million per megawatt nameplate.

All the big, newer CCGPs cost about $1 billion for a 1 thousand megawatt plant.

A more realistic, practical metric can be found in the February 2020 EIA paper regarding LCOE/LACE.

Wonky, jargon filled piece (albeit short at 22 pages) that nails the nuts and bolts in comparing costs between various types of electricity generation. (Batteries not included).

A very practical cost  framing is on table 1a where it points out the capital cost for new CCGPs is $7.48 per MegawattHOUR ... which ultimately is the best way of looking at this stuff.

[John Snyder + 4]

I am glad you mentioned the hydro-pump "battery", this is well known technology that has existed for many years. Utilized in the diamond mining industry in South Africa. I would be interested to hear how much of this power might be utilized for the desalination plants CA wants to bring online in the coming years. The newest one in San Diego https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=2ahUKEwi3h6G5jp3pAhVB-6wKHZZxBhYQFjACegQIDRAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mercurynews.com%2F2018%2F01%2F29%2Fcalifornia-water-desalination-projects-move-forward-with-new-state-funding%2F&usg=AOvVaw3FZrVIMCuEhLs-wvFBqckq

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,187]

6 hours ago, NickW said:

Could say the same about power station chimneys and cooling towers, high rise towers, TV masts. 

Yea, but they do not spin during sunrise/sunset causing strobe effects, sending humans into catatonic shock. (less and less of a problem as the turbines get ever bigger)

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

5 hours ago, John Snyder said:

I am glad you mentioned the hydro-pump "battery", this is well known technology that has existed for many years. Utilized in the diamond mining industry in South Africa. I would be interested to hear how much of this power might be utilized for the desalination plants CA wants to bring online in the coming years. The newest one in San Diego https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=2ahUKEwi3h6G5jp3pAhVB-6wKHZZxBhYQFjACegQIDRAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mercurynews.com%2F2018%2F01%2F29%2Fcalifornia-water-desalination-projects-move-forward-with-new-state-funding%2F&usg=AOvVaw3FZrVIMCuEhLs-wvFBqckq

Desalination is energy intensive enough to take any additional power a solar farm will produce. In fact, solar won't be there enough of the time to keep the plants online. Not without storage or plant throttling.

Plant throttling, btw, is a great way to increase capital expenditure without getting a notable increase in returns. Imagine overbuilding a plant to twice its capacity just to make use of extra power here and there, effectively using the addition about 25% of the time and generating shitty returns. 

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

5 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

@Jay McKinsey Lets do the math:

Industrial battery storage cost 200-800 US dollars per 1 KWh, so 200,000-800,000 per 1 MWh.

(consider https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/solar-plus-storage-101 )

 

As a rule of thumb you need back up  storage for at least 1-2 weeks of nameplate power capacity for intermittent sources.

(It could be battery storage or reserved back up capacity of natural gas/coal/nuclear/pump hydro generation)

Lets be optimistic and assume 1 week so 168 hours.

So for 1 MW of your renewables you need: 168h*1MW = 168 MWh of back up,

This costs you : 168*200,000 = 33.6 million dollars of initial investment. Battery projects are for 20 years. I do not know how much you need for maintenance.

Natural gas plant: About 3 million US dollars per 1 MW of nameplate capacity.

Availability factors of battery and natural gas we assume the same at 90% so simplify calculations.

 So you need 33.6 million US dollars to built this storage per 1 MW of your renewables nameplate capacity.

The natural gas plants are available, no need of investment.

Cost of wind or solar per 1 MW is 3-6 million US dollars.

So cost of battery storage backup is even much larger than initial investment needed for renewables.

Renewables could never rely on battery storage cause they would be extremely expensive.

Again rule of thumb is battery storage is still 2 orders of magnitude too expensive to be economically feasible.

They are used at large power plants or in grid as short term stabilizers just like UPS at your PC.

 

The ratio of renewable power source to storage is the opposite of what you say. There needs to be far more power generation because generation peaks for a few hours a day but will not only need to cover demand for those hours but also charge batteries to cover the rest of the day. The way it works is that you overbuild the nameplate capacity of the renewable power source so that you have enough excess to charge the storage. The Sun does come up every day and we are sourcing renewables from across the western US to make up for local variations in both sun and wind. It isn't that hard to project minimum production and storage needs.

Batteries are being used for time of day shifting. At most CA needs enough to cover a whole day's consumption or about 550 GWh. Longer term bulk storage will be proved by pumped hydro and likely hydrogen.  

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

6 hours ago, Coffeeguyzz said:

A very practical cost  framing is on table 1a where it points out the capital cost for new CCGPs is $7.48 per MegawattHOUR ... which ultimately is the best way of looking at this stuff.

Ignoring the fuel cost is not the best way of looking at this stuff.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

3 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Yea, but they do not spin during sunrise/sunset causing strobe effects, sending humans into catatonic shock. (less and less of a problem as the turbines get ever bigger)

The strobe effects only occur in close proximity, the discussion was about how far away turbines are visible.

[pisstol + 48]

23 hours ago, Gregory Purcell said:

What I am dreaming of is a pipeline across Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming which draws water from the Mississippi, Missouri and Platte Rivers during snow melt, then drops it at the headwaters of the Colorado,  which would keep all those hydroelectric Damns running and provide water for the far west of America.

I'm surprised nobody has responded to you about the pipline idea. Carlos Slim's business Grupo CARSO built a 14 mile water pipeline to take water to Juarez in Mexico. So water pipelines exist. You not only have to figure the cost of the pipeline, but also the cost of pumping the water. I live almost exactly a mile above sea level. I used to watch TV with a very old man. He asked why they couldn't pipe the flood water in the eastern U.S. to us. I told him it would be impossible. But after I read about the 14-mile pipeline to Juarez, I quit thinking it was impossible.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,187]

41 minutes ago, pisstol said:

I'm surprised nobody has responded to you about the pipline idea. Carlos Slim's business Grupo CARSO built a 14 mile water pipeline to take water to Juarez in Mexico. So water pipelines exist. You not only have to figure the cost of the pipeline, but also the cost of pumping the water. I live almost exactly a mile above sea level. I used to watch TV with a very old man. He asked why they couldn't pipe the flood water in the eastern U.S. to us. I told him it would be impossible. But after I read about the 14-mile pipeline to Juarez, I quit thinking it was impossible.

THe problem is He, like you cannot read an elevation map.  If you want water so badly NAWAPA... Do the whole enchilada and instead of the gigantic nuclear powered water pump stations, dig a ~500 mile giant tunnel or two or three...  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance

PS: I would gladly help fund this project.... Canada on the other hand..., well western Canada would not object as they now get barge access for all of their products from minerals, logging, to grain.  Eastern Canada would HATE it as it effectively means W. Canada becomes part of the USA.  .... as if they are not already

Edited May 6, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[markslawson + 1,057]

23 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

The MWh were in the article and I posted them earlier in the thread. 770MW / 3080MWh

The intent of these batteries is mostly to provide for time of day shifting from day to evening to shave that duck curve. They will also provide peak demand services. We are retiring a number of gas plants and replacing them with batteries.

Okay - I take back some of what I said, although the article should say somewhere up the top that its 770MW output with a capacity to deliver that output for five hours, and the listings should say rated output, but fair enough. However, that is completely insufficient to replace gas plants. You cannot retire gas plants and hope to put batteries in their place, no matter how cheap they may be. What on earth are you thinking?

 

21 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

cost of Lithium batteries for both grid and EV's are decreasing in cost by 50% every 3 years. Batteries are going to become incredibly cheap over the next decade. That is why EV's and renewables will ultimately supplant fossil fuels. 

This is wild over-estimate. Here is a note from Bloomberg  New Finance ... With Market Average At $156/kWh In 2019. ... By 2023, average prices will be close to $100/kWh, according to the latest forecast from research company BloombergNEF (BNEF).

That's actually one third in four years, and its a forecast where they've basically assumed the existing trend wil continue.. Here is the full story

https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-fall-as-market-ramps-up-with-market-average-at-156-kwh-in-2019/ 

You'll note the decline in prices over the past decade. Sure they've been sharp declines but nothing like your 50 per cent every three years - bit more than half that maybe - and quite understandable given the enthusiasm for using batteries in niche markets in power, as well as government support for EVs creating a market where there wasn't one before. Can this continue? I would doubt it, as would a lot of analysts. The supply of the previous niche market materials has to catch up. Also bear in mind that its still basically a niche market besides the like of petrol, gas and coal. The number of batteries required to make a difference in storage is in the millions, if not billions, and even then you'd still need backup gas generators.. sorry, it ain't going to happen..    

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

9 hours ago, Coffeeguyzz said:

Mr. Marcin

While I completely agree with your numbers regarding the astronomical cost of battery-sourced electricity, I would point out that your figure of $3 million per megawatt capital expense for combined cycle is triple the actual cost.

Even Lazard (also too high) pegs building expense at slightly above $1 million per megawatt nameplate.

All the big, newer CCGPs cost about $1 billion for a 1 thousand megawatt plant.

A more realistic, practical metric can be found in the February 2020 EIA paper regarding LCOE/LACE.

Wonky, jargon filled piece (albeit short at 22 pages) that nails the nuts and bolts in comparing costs between various types of electricity generation. (Batteries not included).

A very practical cost  framing is on table 1a where it points out the capital cost for new CCGPs is $7.48 per MegawattHOUR ... which ultimately is the best way of looking at this stuff.

Here is Table 1A It is an estimate of LCOE in 2025. CC gas only wins if you ignore everything except the capital cost.😂

 

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

On 5/4/2020 at 11:06 AM, Gregory Purcell said:

Using Solar & Wind to refill the Hoover Basin would strain all down stream water levels,  I have a crazy idea, global warming means the dry areas become dryer  and the wet areas get wetter, hence we see less water in the Colorado river  and more frequent flooding on the Mississippi... so why not run a pipeline in between  to refill the upper basins of the Colorado River.

 

Pumping water uphill takes a lot of energy. Pumping up from (say) Hannibal MI (506 ft)  to the Hoover dam (1234 ft) is gonna cost you. As an example, California has the biggest water engineering works in the world: the California Water Project. the project is the largest electricity producer in the state, but it consumes more electricity pumping water than its dams produce, so it is the biggest net electricity consumer in the state. This is true even though on average the water consumers are at lower elevation than the dams.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

52 minutes ago, markslawson said:

Okay - I take back some of what I said, although the article should say somewhere up the top that its 770MW output with a capacity to deliver that output for five hours, and the listings should say rated output, but fair enough. However, that is completely insufficient to replace gas plants. You cannot retire gas plants and hope to put batteries in their place, no matter how cheap they may be. What on earth are you thinking?

 

This is wild over-estimate. Here is a note from Bloomberg  New Finance ... With Market Average At $156/kWh In 2019. ... By 2023, average prices will be close to $100/kWh, according to the latest forecast from research company BloombergNEF (BNEF).

That's actually one third in four years, and its a forecast where they've basically assumed the existing trend wil continue.. Here is the full story

https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-fall-as-market-ramps-up-with-market-average-at-156-kwh-in-2019/ 

You'll note the decline in prices over the past decade. Sure they've been sharp declines but nothing like your 50 per cent every three years - bit more than half that maybe - and quite understandable given the enthusiasm for using batteries in niche markets in power, as well as government support for EVs creating a market where there wasn't one before. Can this continue? I would doubt it, as would a lot of analysts. The supply of the previous niche market materials has to catch up. Also bear in mind that its still basically a niche market besides the like of petrol, gas and coal. The number of batteries required to make a difference in storage is in the millions, if not billions, and even then you'd still need backup gas generators.. sorry, it ain't going to happen..    

Whether you like it or not the stated intent of this battery purchase is to allow the closing of several gas turbine plants. Perhaps you would like to read about it on UtilityDive https://www.utilitydive.com/news/sce-contracts-for-770-mw-of-battery-storage-to-bolster-californias-transit/577335/

BNEF is very conservative on their projections. They never assume the rate is going to continue as steeply as in the past. In their most recent update they say the benchmark LCOE for battery storage has tumbled to $150/MWh, about half of what it was two years ago:

https://about.bnef.com/blog/scale-up-of-solar-and-wind-puts-existing-coal-gas-at-risk/

So I am even being conservative when I say 50% every three years, the historical curve is 50% every two years!

Ignore table below, for some reason I can't delete it:

Edited May 6, 2020 by Jay McKinsey

[pisstol + 48]

1 hour ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

THe problem is He, like you cannot read an elevation map.  If you want water so badly NAWAPA... Do the whole enchilada and instead of the gigantic nuclear powered water pump stations, dig a ~500 mile giant tunnel or two or three...  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance

Thanks for the comments. I followed the link and read about NAWAPA & GCNA, which I didn't know about.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

People tend to confuse storage for short-term load shifting with long-term storage. The economics and technology are different. Big lithium-ion batteries make sense for load shifting. They react instantly and the technology has an intrinsic power-to-energy ratio of about 4 hours, which is a fairly good match to the daily load-shift requirement They also have an excellent round-trip efficiency. . When you use them for longer-term storage, you are paying for far too much power for the energy you want to store. For longer-term storage, use flow batteries, with a slightly lower round-trip efficiency, but a completely flexible power-to-energy ratio. Still fairly expensive.

For long-term storage (months) you must accept a poorer round-trip efficiency. You use pumped hydro or gas storage.

My favorite is CH4 storage. Use solar and wind to produce CH4 from water and atmospheric CO2, and transport and store it, then convert it back to electricity using the gas turbines. This is carbon neutral, because the amount of CO2 generated by the turbines is equal to the amount of CO2 extracted from the air to make the CH4. This approach uses the existing massive CH4 transport and storage infrastructure, so the only new equipment is the P2G convertors. In California, We buy CH4 (natural gas) when it's cheap (Spring and Fall) and store it in massive quantities in underground storage systems, then use it in Winter and a little bit in Summer. Also, on contrast to elerctricity, CH4 can be transported very efficiently over transcontinental distances via pipeline and transcontinentally using LNG carriers.

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by Dan Clemmensen
sp

[nsdp + 449]

13 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Damn!!! I think I agree with Marcin! Might be time for a good head shake...😂

This is the reason why all these technologies  except pumped storage are  from (Wolkenkuckucksheim Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdly, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are.)  because battery storage lacks reactive power and inertial mass.  both are necessary to make the grid work.  Reactvie power (voltage ) is like the head pressure in a watertower  for a city water system. No water  tower no water pressure and no water at the faucet.   Inertial mass is like a bug splattering your windshield as you drive down the road at 100k/h.  The bug going splat represents changes in load as people turn things on and off on the grid. The generators and gas/steam turbines are rotating mass that  provide the immovable  object that keeps the grid  on that frequency and at voltage.

Using batteries to supplement the grid is like using a bandaid to cover a shrapnel wound.   It will work if the wound is very small.

Pumped hydro as is used in Europe  will provide all three services, Kwh, voltage and mass not just kwh as batteries do.  This design which uses hydrogen and oxygen from an electrolyzer burned in a recylced jet engine  https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2016510379A/ja shows how far behind the Japanese and Chinese  US utilities are an how gullible US engineers are to a sales pitch.  Hydrogen storage is measures in terms of 1000's of MWH (use of MW is like not knowing the difference between a VLCC that can pass through the Suez Canal and a ULCC that has to go around the Horn of  Africa (the Saudi Charters are all ULCC's not VLCC's as posters here adn article writers describe them))  The largest storage field  in the US is the National Helium Reserve north of Amarillo which the helium is almost depleted.  It could store 4,000,000 MWh in electrical equivalent.  Phillips 66 has the ability to store 92,000MWh at Clemens dome, Moss Bluff  can store 84,000 MWH  and Fannett can store a 130,000 MWh.  Tyneside in the UK can store 15,0000 MWh .  These four projects are the range of scale that will be needed to convert renewables  to  practical use for grid supply https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/POWER/proceedings-abstract/POWER2018/51395/V001T06A004/277431

Aircraft engines will be a dime a dozen soon.  .

Edited May 6, 2020 by nsdp
typos

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Hey! Not ALL US engineers are gullible!😂

[nsdp + 449]

2 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Hey! Not ALL US engineers are gullible!😂

I should have said utility engineers.  My apologies.   I have worked with very good engineers in the patch.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

On 5/4/2020 at 5:28 PM, KeyboardWarrior said:

Maybe, but consider the fact that much of it is government intervention. You say a fossil fuel plant would take longer because of permits, but that's just Cali for you. 

 

Slow down. Two things: Combined cycle plants will improve too, and 40% is pretty god damned high for 5 years of R&D. Are costs still giong to decrease if efficiency increases? Probably not for a while. Here's the real kicker. If you reach 40%, you'll be equal to combined cycle plants in their current state, not ahead; and probably not ahead of the future designs especially. This is good enough for me, but not good enough for your claims and your agenda (indicated by comments you make later). 

I'm not strictly anti solar, but people are getting way ahead of themselves when touting the death of oil. It will come.. in 150 years maybe. Its replacement probably won't be what you'd expect either. If we quit strangling nuclear power, that will become the dominant and most profitable energy solution. 

The efficiency numbers for combined cycle and solar measure two completely different things and are not comparable. combined cycle efficiency is a measure of actual electrical energy output versus chemical  energy input. Solar cell efficiency is a measure of electrical energy output versus photonic energy input.  But the photons are free and the gas is not, so the comparison is meaningless. instead, you must compare the cost of capital and the cost of operations for the same electrical output at the system level.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

26 minutes ago, nsdp said:

This is the reason why all these technologies  except pumped storage are  from (Wolkenkuckucksheim Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdly, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are.)  because battery storage lacks reactive power and inertial mass.  both are necessary to make the grid work.  Reactvie power (voltage ) is like the head pressure in a watertower  for a city water system. No water  tower no water pressure and no water  will work if the would is small enough.  It at the faucet.   Inertial mass is like a bug splattering your windshield as you drive down the road at 100k/h.  The bug going splat represents changes in load as people turn things on and off on the grid. The generators and gas/steam turbines are rotating mass that  provide the immovable  object that keeps the grid  on that frequency and at voltage.

Using batteries to supplement the grid is like using a bandaid to cover a shrapnel wound.   It will work if the wound is very small.

Pumped hydro as is used in Europe  will provide all three services, Kwh, voltage and mass not just kwh as batteries do.  This design which uses hydrogen and oxygen from an electrolyzer burned in a recylced jet engine  https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2016510379A/ja shows how far behind the Japanese and Chinese  US utilities are an how gullible US engineers are to a sales pitch.  Hydrogen storage is measures in terms of 1000's of MWH (use of MW is like not knowing the difference between a VLCC that can pass through the Suez Canal and a ULCC that has to go around the Horn of  Africa (the Saudi Charters are all ULCC's not VLCC's as posters here adn article writers describe them))  The largest storage field  in the US is the National Helium Reserve north of Amarillo which the helium i almost depleted.  It couls store 4,000,0000MWh in electrical equivalent.  Phillips 66 has the ability to store 92,000MWh at Clemens dome, Moss Bluff  can store 84,000 MWH  and Fannett can store a 130,0000 MWh.  Tyneside in the UK can store 15,0000 MWh .  These four projects are the range of scale that will be needed to convert renewables  to  practical use for grid supply. https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/POWER/proceedings-abstract/POWER2018/51395/V001T06A004/277431

Well I'm not a fancy engineer, just a lowly economist, but in my quick research I came across numerous resources describing how batteries excel at voltage regulation through both active and reactive power supply and "battery-based energy storage can provide inertial response for system reliability much more efficiently, at a lower cost and with substantially reduced emissions than a much larger quantity of thermal generation." https://www.energy-storage.news/blogs/digital-inertia-energy-storage-can-stabilise-grid-with-1-10-the-capacity-of

[Piotr Berman + 82]

I have doubt if mass scale battery storage makes much sense in California, at least for solar power when solar power is a small part of total production.  For a large part of the year, the peak demand is during the day because of air conditioning, and this is when there is a peak production from the solar panels.

Additionally, California has a lot of mountains, large and moderate in size, so there are good conditions for pumped hydro.  Battery storage is better on a small scale, but pumped hydro is apparently cheaper for state-wide grid.

Lastly, gas fired power stations are reputed to have low capital cost compared with other electricity sources.  Coupled with natural gas storage, they should be perfect to fill the gaps.

I am afraid that a lot of "green energy project" is design for "aesthetic reasons" or popularity, and economic calculations are secondary.  

 

 

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

2 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Well I'm not a fancy engineer, just a lowly economist, but in my quick research I came across numerous resources describing how batteries excel at voltage regulation through both active and reactive power supply and "battery-based energy storage can provide inertial response for system reliability much more efficiently, at a lower cost and with substantially reduced emissions than a much larger quantity of thermal generation." https://www.energy-storage.news/blogs/digital-inertia-energy-storage-can-stabilise-grid-with-1-10-the-capacity-of

Yup. This is what batteries are best at. They can react in milliseconds, while turbines cannot. The big Hornsdale battery in Australia was so good at reactive supply that they were not getting paid for the service, since the monitoring equipment did not see the voltage and frequency variations that the system was compensating for. Basically, no other type of generator can do this as well as a battery, because the battery is using electronics instead of mechanical systems. Batteries are (relatively speaking) horrible at long-term and mid-term storage, but unsurpassed at reactive response.

[nsdp + 449]

3 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Well I'm not a fancy engineer, just a lowly economist, but in my quick research I came across numerous resources describing how batteries excel at voltage regulation through both active and reactive power supply and "battery-based energy storage can provide inertial response for system reliability much more efficiently, at a lower cost and with substantially reduced emissions than a much larger quantity of thermal generation." https://www.energy-storage.news/blogs/digital-inertia-energy-storage-can-stabilise-grid-with-1-10-the-capacity-of

You need to ignore the sales pitches that sales engineers put up on the web.  Pay attention to IEEE spectrum for what  meets the reserve requirements of N-1 conditions of NERC standards.

"

Severe voltage drops, for example, hobble SVCs, whose reactive power output drops at double the rate of line voltage. In contrast, a synchronous condenser’s spinning rotor keeps on pumping out reactive power. It will also generate real power if needed, moderating the drop in AC frequency that would result, say, from shutting down a power plant.

And the condenser’s output can briefly handle several times its rated capacity for tens of seconds as its metal components heat up temporarily—behavior that is not possible for devices relying on comparatively fragile silicon switches. “Because they’re iron and copper, they have a lot of overload capability. You can’t overload silicon significantly,” says Nicholas Miller, a power systems expert with GE Energy Consulting, in Schenectady, N.Y.  https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/zombie-coal-plants-reanimated-to-stabilize-the-grid  and

To emulate the inertial behavior of massive rotating equipment, a renewable generator must somehow find extra power quick. Québec's wind turbines do so through a collaboration between the turbines' solid-state power electronics and their moving parts. "When the wind turbines see an imbalance between load and generation that causes a frequency deviation on the system they’re able to … extract some kinetic energy that is stored in the rotating masses of the wind turbines,” explains Aubut.

 

 

 

During a December 2015 transformer failure that took more than 1,600-MW of power generation offline, synthetic inertia kicked in 126 MW of extra power to arrest the resulting frequency drop. Quebec’s AC frequency bottomed out at 59.1 hertz – well below its 60-hertz standard – but Aubut and his colleagues estimate that it would have dropped a further 0.1-0.2-hz without the synthetic inertia. And they estimate that this was roughly the same contribution that conventional power plants would have provided.

"If we had had only synchronous generation instead of wind with the same event and operating conditions, we’d have had about the same deviation,” says Aubut.

 

The trouble, says Aubut, is what happens after the frequency drop. In all but the strongest wind conditions providing synthetic inertia will slow a wind turbine's rotor. Re-accelerating to optimal speed thereafter absorbs some of the wind power that the turbine can export to the grid. Data from ENERCON shows power reductions of up to 60 percent in some turbines.

This energy recovery phase delays the grid’s frequency recovery. After Québec’s December 2015 transformer event, for example, the system frequency flat-lined for several seconds at 59.4 Hz before additional power reserves could push it back to 60. Under different conditions, says Aubut, that post-inertia recovery could have actually caused a “double-dip” in system frequency, increasing the risk of triggering protective relays at substations and causing blackouts. 

Hydro-Québec is revising its synthetic inertia to minimize the risk of a double-dip. It plans to limit power reduction during recovery to no more than 20 percent of a wind turbine’s capacity. Turbine manufacturers are already testing second-generation synthetic inertia systems that comply with the new standard. 

 

ENERCON presented an upgraded synthetic inertia control scheme at last year’s Wind Integration Workshop. Whereas the first generation of ENERCON Inertia Emulation revved rotors back to their optimal speed as quickly as possible, the new scheme uses power estimation and closed-loop control to enable smooth and tunable re-acceleration. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/can-synthetic-inertia-stabilize-power-grids

 

Markus Fischer, ENERCON’s Montreal-based regional manager for grid integration, says the upgraded scheme showed "promising results" in tests on full scale turbines and commercial rollout is “expected to happen in the near future.” Retrofitting its first generation machines, he says, will require no added hardware. 

 

Synthetic inertia requirements, meanwhile, may be spreading. Grid operators in Ontario and Brazil have already joined Hydro-Québec’s lead, and Fischer says the first harmonized grid code for European generators, which entered into force earlier this year, “opens the doors to European system operators to ask for inertial response from wind.”https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/can-synthetic-inertia-stabilize-power-grids

Currrent NERC reliability regulations don't allow synthetic inertia due to the double dip and the 2X rate of voltage collapse.

 

 

 

 

[nsdp + 449]

20 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

Yup. This is what batteries are best at. They can react in milliseconds, while turbines cannot. The big Hornsdale battery in Australia was so good at reactive supply that they were not getting paid for the service, since the monitoring equipment did not see the voltage and frequency variations that the system was compensating for. Basically, no other type of generator can do this as well as a battery, because the battery is using electronics instead of mechanical systems. Batteries are (relatively speaking) horrible at long-term and mid-term storage, but unsurpassed at reactive response.

Hornsdale also collapsed and blacked out the entire South Australia grid.  

The reason they(Hornsdale) did not get paid was the reactive was not dynamic reactive power able to perform through a voltage collapse.   Walter Heisenberg proved that won't happen.  something to do with Quantum Mechanics and electrons and order of multiplication inside the Matrix. .

Edited May 6, 2020 by nsdp

[Coffeeguyzz + 454]

Mr. McKinsey 

Glad you tracked down that table.

Shows open minded perspective coupled with willingness to 'dig in' and find out for yourself.

My initial $7/Mwh post was specifically addressing the capital cost of the new CCGPs.

That 1a table is a wealth of comparative data for so many reasons, the vulnerability of offshore wind being one.

Getting back to onshore wind/CCGP operational cost comparisons, I was unable to pin down the EIA's fuel cost (listed under 'variable O&M') despite extensive research throughout the EIA's cross linking references. Lazard pegs natgas cost at $3.45/mmbtu, which is currently about $1.35 above Henry Hub.

When one looks at the near equal operational cost of wind versus CCGP,  the dispatchability along with the late afternoon/early evening peak demand should show clear advantages for the CCGPs.

I realize a strong point you are attempting is to address the reliability along with peak demand provided via low cost batteries.

What I, and many others ... including Mr. Market, are saying is that the implementation of Renewable power generators is an extremely expensive, unreliable source of electricity and will continue to be shown as such.