.

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,554]

43 minutes ago, turbguy said:

With the advent of both power electronics and DFIG's , you can extract MUCH more stored rotating inertia from a wind turbine than a synchronous connected steam turbine.  The steam turbine-generator stores a whole lot, but can only extract about 5% of it without tripping underfrequency relaying.  With a wind machine as featured, you can get about 90% (+/-). 

These wind turbine's is there output stream steady enough to power a grid with any sort of short term stability or long term reliance? Or perhaps a flash in the pan..or is there output stored in a battery farm?

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,554]

1 hour ago, Old-Ruffneck said:

New update, no power here till tomorrow afternoon. another 24 hours about.....50+ gallons diesel at 2.69. expensive electricity!!! but cheaper than freezing pipes. 

Well if it is any condolence to you...Here in Portland we to had a ice storm, while hydro power is used to generate elec..the city does not trim the trees from the grid. So when the ice storm hits the trees snap along with the lines. Yesterday there were 400,000 without power, our home included. It just so happens we have a say larger RV in the back, guess what it is powered by a 10kw Onan..a smidge noisy yet at the same time diesel is keeping the lights on and heat to by the way.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

I never realized how expensive it was to run an individual generator. I have thought about getting a large propane generator and disconnecting from the grid. Why does it cost so much more when you pay the grid so many other taxes and fees too?

The basic reason is that piston engines are much less efficient than steam turbines. Piston engines have many advantages, but the tradeoff is that they are not optimal for steady-state 1800 RPM constant speed under variable load. A huge steam turbine has many disadvantages but it can be highly optimized for its purpose.  Wind and solar are also cheap. Instead of a piston generator, you could install a battery and solar panels: cheap to operate, but expensive to buy and install.

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,239]

13 minutes ago, Eyes Wide Open said:

Well if it is any condolence to you...Here in Portland we to had a ice storm, while hydro power is used to generate elec..the city does not trim the trees from the grid. So when the ice storm hits the trees snap along with the lines. Yesterday there were 400,000 without power, our home included. It just so happens we have a say larger RV in the back, guess what it is powered by a 10kw Onan..a smidge noisy yet at the same time diesel is keeping the lights on and heat to by the way.

My sister-in-law lives in Kingwood Estates north of Houston. No power there either. Water line to kitchen in attic froze and slight damage. 

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,239]

14 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

The basic reason is that piston engines are much less efficient than steam turbines. Piston engines have many advantages, but the tradeoff is that they are not optimal for steady-state 1800 RPM constant speed under variable load. A huge steam turbine has many disadvantages but it can be highly optimized for its purpose.  Wind and solar are also cheap. Instead of a piston generator, you could install a battery and solar panels: cheap to operate, but expensive to buy and install.

Dan, he lives just north of Springfield, Illinois. Many Many solar panels and batteries in the neighborhood of 25k to buy and install. That would buy alot of years of electricity in even a modest 2000sq foot home. About 10 years worth of grid electricity. I am north of @ronwagn about 80 miles. Solar must get cheaper to be cost effective...... 

My idea is to build giant boiler system in Yellowstone, all the free boiling water that is unlimited. Green folks no mind eye-polluting West Texas with windmills by the thousand on the mesa's, so let's use Yellowstones massive underground boiler.....

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

2 hours ago, NickW said:

I am aware of the issues around the having enough grid inertia to deal with frequency drops

I'll ask again

Whats the grid operators response to a sustained fall in frequency? 

I'm going to be charitable here and assume you're not an electrical engineer? I am but focused on digital design rather than power distribution (the EE degree is wider than every other major, by far). However I'm reasonably well versed in the subject. The frequency variability on the grid is negligible. Perhaps you meant voltage? 

[El Gato + 254]

7 hours ago, NickW said:

I agree - batteries are unsurpassed in terms of supporting grid frequency and providing very short duration power back up to bridge that gap between the fall off in frequency and the pump storage / OCGT / Stationary gensets to kick in to meet the shortfall. 

Another advantage of batteries is they are modular so can be distributed around the grid to provide support. 

But Batteries also lose capacity, the colder they get, which is the reason you would seem to need them as a backup. Not suited for cold weather areas

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

6 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

My entire argument is that this is brought on by bad management, or at least management where profit motive overrides the consumer's best interest.  As I said earlier, I don't think anyone is against harnessing wind and solar, but it must be managed, and be affordable.  Otherwise it doesn't matter if you have a nuclear powerplant or a windmill for every 10 square miles.  Yes, Texas appears to have largely failed more broadly than the U.K. when it comes to power management, but the scale, legal systems, and presumably profit management regulations between the countries are also obviously quite different.  But that IS NO EXCUSE.  Texas should be doing better and they should be embarrassed to the point of fixing it.

As for raw dollars/pounds/euros invested, they matter little IF they are improperly managed.  If the U.K. has done a good job managing their power needs, I salute them.  Texas obviously has not.

Pull out hydropower and transmission lines out of the way and the numbers of china arent so much larger than the US if any...

Well, China is weird, half of china's project are useful, half the other are white elephants, the reason why china builds so many wind and solar farms isn't so much to generate power or anything but to gain recognition and create jobs, in china if you have a solar panel factory, and the state back you, you don't need to make profits.

As a way of doing things subsidizing half the cost of making solar panels (and its respective supply chain) is a easy way to tickle the economies of scale, China didn't find a way to make solar panels twice or 3 times as cheap in two years ,they just paid half the cost, so they have to spend half the money to build their solar farms, and employ people, because if the chinese interior was very unemployed, you can see the history of china to know that is really, really, bad

And, as long chinks save, the CCP can keep the money printing and lending to companies that may or may not be able to pay it, if its in the name of stability and employment

[El Gato + 254]

3 hours ago, NickW said:

🤣🤡

Nice try - introduce a load of stuff  competely irrelevant to the point. This issue starts from someone making a  point about going into a 'cooling cycle'. We are  which is 11 years (yes I know there are other much longer cycles) 

We are heading into the solar minimum in this short cycle and in about 6 years we will be at the solar maximum. 

The final point on this is this cycle is completely irrelevant to the GW debate. 

The earth has also changed it's "Tilt", with the northern hemisphere getting more light, and the Southern less. Anybody notice the the minimum daylight hours for the year were earlier than the winter solstice this year? And the longer daylight hours started earlier?

BTW the phenomenon of the earth tilt was verified by 7 different esquimaux tribes in Alaska and Canada.

[El Gato + 254]

As an add on, another reason the Wind turbines freeze would be the viscosity of the gearbox oil. They run thinner lubes in the north, and heavier ones in the south. If the turbine idled for any decent amount of time, it would thicken to the level of cold liquid mollasses. We had frac pumps brought up north one year from Texas, they sent straight to the field, and they were blowing filters out left and right. They tried to blame the filter supplier till some one asked the their oil viscocities they were running. Running that heavy stuff they said sheepishly. Didn't work well in the winter for them

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

1 hour ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

The basic reason is that piston engines are much less efficient than steam turbines. Piston engines have many advantages, but the tradeoff is that they are not optimal for steady-state 1800 RPM constant speed under variable load. A huge steam turbine has many disadvantages but it can be highly optimized for its purpose.  Wind and solar are also cheap. Instead of a piston generator, you could install a battery and solar panels: cheap to operate, but expensive to buy and install.

Not quite, reciprocating engines have up to 52-55% efficiency if they are 4 stroke engines, and they lick the 57% efficiency if they are two stroke engines, individually they can ramp up up to 200MW/minute per engine, and those engines have anywere from 5 to 100MW, is very hard to reach those efficiencies unless you go with Ultra-Supercritical-Double-Reheat steam turbines

Yes,a  very big, Triple-Reheat Advanced-Ultra-Super-Critical steam turbine with 1850MWe of output running at 100% all the time, with triple reheat, and steam at 760°C and 400 bar pressure  will reach 60% efficiency in a coal boiler, and 65% efficiency in a nuclear powerplant, but they only do that at a very certain and close power output and steam flow rate

subcritical Steam turbines with less than 100MWe that you would use in a peaker, with luck reach 40% efficiency

[SUZNV + 1,197]

3 hours ago, turbguy said:

The pumped storage efficincy is simply input v output. Who cares where you get the "juice" from for pump-mode?  In my experience, it was time shifting Nuc power, then "selling water" on the way out.

I was hoping an innovation of technology because the website claims the Holy Grail for charging using cheap renewable energy without using lithium batteries.  If it is nuc then I wouldn't ask these questions. Energy storage is good for not wasting unused electricity...

Sounds like big marketing words utilize the trend of renewable energy to me. The only advantage is storage space and output. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by SUZNV

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

The maximum efficiency for power generation is micro turbines. There are multiple drilling platforms generating power this way. Basically small jet engines to produce power. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

1 hour ago, Old-Ruffneck said:

Dan, he lives just north of Springfield, Illinois. Many Many solar panels and batteries in the neighborhood of 25k to buy and install. That would buy alot of years of electricity in even a modest 2000sq foot home. About 10 years worth of grid electricity. I am north of @ronwagn about 80 miles. Solar must get cheaper to be cost effective...... 

My idea is to build giant boiler system in Yellowstone, all the free boiling water that is unlimited. Green folks no mind eye-polluting West Texas with windmills by the thousand on the mesa's, so let's use Yellowstones massive underground boiler.....

I love the idea of using geothermal. I knew a guy who had it installed for his new home, just using the heat down maybe 15 feet or so (just a guess). Yellowstone and many other spots have hot water springs. It seems like it is more expensive than one would suspect. How about using water or other safe but denser liquid to pump through old oil wells. How warm is the earth in the depths of abandoned oil wells? Just use tubing through the foundation of homes or in radiators for heat. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

The basic reason is that piston engines are much less efficient than steam turbines. Piston engines have many advantages, but the tradeoff is that they are not optimal for steady-state 1800 RPM constant speed under variable load. A huge steam turbine has many disadvantages but it can be highly optimized for its purpose.  Wind and solar are also cheap. Instead of a piston generator, you could install a battery and solar panels: cheap to operate, but expensive to buy and install.

Microturbines are available in all sizes and are being used in Europe to heat homes and provide electricity. They are best adapted for combined heat and electrical but he same could be said for normal generators. Right?  

[turbguy + 1,540]

2 hours ago, Eyes Wide Open said:

These wind turbine's is there output stream steady enough to power a grid with any sort of short term stability or long term reliance? Or perhaps a flash in the pan..or is there output stored in a battery farm?

If you allow inertial draw-down to continue until frequency drops by just 5%, you will most like trip under-frequency relaying on most large synchronous machines.  THE REMAINING ROTATING INERTIA ( the lion's share, from zero speed to 95% speed)  from those machines has just "flashed away" once those relays trip.  Fast-acting grid stability can be provided with battery storage.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

3 hours ago, Old-Ruffneck said:

You could get a 1000 gallon "pig" or 1500 gallon one like the farmers use on the corn dryers and fill early spring when is at it lowest. Not sure how much propane is running in bulk, but say even 1.29 a gallon...... figure on a gallon an hour on 15k watt genset. Still fairly expensive electricity. NG gensets are less to operate but to run as full time buying power from your local electric company is probably 6cents a kilowatt? Hard to beat that. Ours used to CILCO Central Illinois Light Company, but is Ameren now for 12 years i thinks??

Our monthly bill is only about $200 for electricity and natural gas and all the fees and taxes. We use all LED bulbs and use a small natural gas stove rather than are whole house heat. bedrooms are kept at about 62 degrees that way. If my wife wants to use her sewing room she ocasionally uses a small electric heater. Our largest expense is probably air conditioning in the summertime. We like 68 degrees then and have a ceiling fan in every room. It would probably be overkill for me to buy a large propane tank but my heating stove takes propane or natural gas from separate connections.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

3 hours ago, Old-Ruffneck said:

You could get a 1000 gallon "pig" or 1500 gallon one like the farmers use on the corn dryers and fill early spring when is at it lowest. Not sure how much propane is running in bulk, but say even 1.29 a gallon...... figure on a gallon an hour on 15k watt genset. Still fairly expensive electricity. NG gensets are less to operate but to run as full time buying power from your local electric company is probably 6cents a kilowatt? Hard to beat that. Ours used to CILCO Central Illinois Light Company, but is Ameren now for 12 years i thinks??

If you are buying ~2000gallons of Propane at a time, you will pay during summer time(lowest) about $0.90/gallon or lower.  Lowest I have paid in last 5 years is $0.80/gallon.  Fill up once every +2 years or so. 

What idiot on this earth runs a generator all the time when power is out? 

You run a generator to heat the boiler/warm up the house/cool down freezer, cook real quick, take a shower, pump up the pressure tank and then it goes off.  Runtime on a generator, usually is no more than 4 hours a day if you are really lazy about things.  4 or 5 gallons a day maximum and more like 2 is closer to reality. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

2 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

The basic reason is that piston engines are much less efficient than steam turbines.

The opposite is true.  Piston engines are far more efficient than turbines.  The giant turbines use 3 stages to get their high efficiency.  If you used 3 piston engines in a row, its efficiency would be superior. 

But, energy density of turbines is VASTLY superior, VASTLY cheaper to build, and VASTLY more reliable requireing VASTLY less maintenance and why one never(erm, almost never) sees LARGE piston engine electric generators. 

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,239]

15 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Our monthly bill is only about $200 for electricity and natural gas and all the fees and taxes. We use all LED bulbs and use a small natural gas stove rather than are whole house heat. bedrooms are kept at about 62 degrees that way. If my wife wants to use her sewing room she ocasionally uses a small electric heater. Our largest expense is probably air conditioning in the summertime. We like 68 degrees then and have a ceiling fan in every room. It would probably be overkill for me to buy a large propane tank but my heating stove takes propane or natural gas from separate connections.

Go propane and convert car to run on it. Tax free hehehe. 10kw run about 6 hours to 8 at most, and buy as much Li-on batteries as you can afford. While cooling the freezer, cooking, running heat, excess is stored in the batteries and gives more 'lectricity while the genset is off. Proper management you could live off the grid. Genset 10kw Onan/Cummins spendy but is good unit. And remember, the car is non taxed fuel 😉

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 minutes ago, Old-Ruffneck said:

Go propane and convert car to run on it. Tax free hehehe. 10kw run about 6 hours to 8 at most, and buy as much Li-on batteries as you can afford. While cooling the freezer, cooking, running heat, excess is stored in the batteries and gives more 'lectricity while the genset is off. Proper management you could live off the grid. Genset 10kw Onan/Cummins spendy but is good unit. And remember, the car is non taxed fuel 😉

Thanks for the idea. I have a big van that would save me a lot of money.  

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,554]

24 minutes ago, turbguy said:

If you allow inertial draw-down to continue until frequency drops by just 5%, you will most like trip under-frequency relaying on most large synchronous machines.  THE REMAINING ROTATING INERTIA ( the lion's share, from zero speed to 95% speed)  from those machines has just "flashed away" once those relays trip.  Fast-acting grid stability can be provided with battery storage.

Am I wrong interpreting your thoughts to mean...wind turbines by their very nature produce a highly unstable power supply.

If so why not stabilize this power supply with a battery storage system buffering the variations?

 

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

45 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

I love the idea of using geothermal. I knew a guy who had it installed for his new home, just using the heat down maybe 15 feet or so (just a guess). Yellowstone and many other spots have hot water springs. It seems like it is more expensive than one would suspect. How about using water or other safe but denser liquid to pump through old oil wells. How warm is the earth in the depths of abandoned oil wells? Just use tubing through the foundation of homes or in radiators for heat. 

Traditional geothermal is great. It requires very hot wet rock and is available in only a few places. Newer geothermal is being developed. It uses hot dry rock, which is available about 5 miles deep just about everywhere. You drill some deep wells and inject water. Geothermal can produce a lot of usable energy, usually via steam turbines.

The word "geothermal" is also (incorrectly) used for an entirely different system which is more properly referred to as "ground-source heat pump". These are are either shallow horizontal loops fields (6 feet down or so) or wells maybe 300 feet deep. The ground at these depths is at about 56 degrees F. In conjunction with a heat pump, this is much, much more efficient than a  air-source heat pump, but it does not produce useful  electrical energy.

[turbguy + 1,540]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

The maximum efficiency for power generation is micro turbines. There are multiple drilling platforms generating power this way. Basically small jet engines to produce power. 

They ain't bad, as long as they have a recuperator and operate close to rated. Without recuperators they are rejecting a LOT of heat in the exhaust.  Part-load efficiency can be VERY poor (same with recips).  

I recall observing the liquid fuel flow meter on a Frame 7 GE during commissioning.   Operating at full rated load, 89 gallon/minute, operating at FSNL (Full Speed, No Load), 62 gallons per minute.

For a Large Steam Turbine, you measure First Stage Pressure instead (a fairly good measure of steam flow).  GE Code 7S (950MW, shaft length almost 200 feet long, rated inlet 3600PSI/1005 degrees/1005 degrees.  Full load First Stage Pressure , about 3000 psi; FSNL First stage pressure about 75 psig.  It takes negligible steam flow to get it to full speed.   All the rest is "gravy" (torque at speed).   Recips and gas turbines use a LOT of fuel just to get up to FSNL since they have to pump a lot of air all the time.  Variable inlet guide vanes and "Displacement on Demand" help somewhat with that.  

Steam turbine gotta get rid of the exhaust, too.  A lot of BUT's gets rejected into the condenser to enable the phase change.

Edited February 17, 2021 by turbguy

[turbguy + 1,540]

26 minutes ago, Eyes Wide Open said:

Am I wrong interpreting your thoughts to mean...wind turbines by their very nature produce a highly unstable power supply.

If so why not stabilize this power supply with a battery storage system buffering the variations?

 

There are way too many types of "instability" to discuss here (harmonics, oscillations, faults of various types, sudden loss of load, sudden loss of generation, current overloads, transmission line trips).  Wind turbines can provide spinning inertia, voltage support (VARS), frequency support,fault ride-through). They are not very good at being dispatchable. You take whatever they provide.

BTW, Nuc units are not dispatchable (for load), either.

 

Edited February 17, 2021 by turbguy