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Phanatic posted:People don't build an aluminum plant because they want it to sit idle *not* making aluminum, and you can't base a shitload of workers' work schedules on "hurry in now, the wind just picked up and it's time to make some aluminum." That depends on how much of a factor energy is in production costs, and the sun and wind aren't some mysterious unpredictable factors. Both have predictable time of day and seasonal cycles. As long as we go down the path of building more renewables, there are probably going to be times when power is cheap - more so than is the case today. Something's going to pop up to exploit that.
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Jan 17, 2021 23:54
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Both desalination and hydrogen electrolysis plants can be throttled reasonably quickly, if engineered to do so, with very few negative side-effects. They also don't require a lot of people to operate. As we get more residential solar and smarter controls, we're probably going to see a lot of peak-shifting of loads that are amenable to being shifted.
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Jan 18, 2021 00:01
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:As long as we go down the path of building more renewables, there are probably going to be times when power is cheap - more so than is the case today. Something's going to pop up to exploit that. 
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Jan 18, 2021 01:40
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:To absorb excess energy generation. Until storage solutions are better, we're probably going to need to get better about shifting demand around renewable generation fluctuations. Maybe the better answer is aluminum smelting or hydrogen production, something relatively energy intensive that can be reasonably wound up or down. The biggest consumer on the Australian National Energy Market is the Tomago aluminium smelter. It’s often a quick target for load shedding but a pot line that is shut down temporarily to shed load can’t do this for another few days, at a minimum, without the line being ruined.
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Jan 18, 2021 07:03
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I think the point is that it would be very weird to deliberately design a desalination plant that is not under a constant, known load.
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Jan 18, 2021 23:40
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Also it would be weird to build a desalination plant where the production of the water isn't factored into the overall water supply. If you don't need more fresh water than you have, why desalinate at all? And if you do need more fresh water than you have, it's not exactly optional to run the desalination plant.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:02
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Infinite Karma posted:Also it would be weird to build a desalination plant where the production of the water isn't factored into the overall water supply. If you don't need more fresh water than you have, why desalinate at all? And if you do need more fresh water than you have, it's not exactly optional to run the desalination plant. You run the desalination plant to soak up excess generating capacity as needed. The fresh water is dumped into a reservoir to be used when and as needed. Farmers can tap it for irrigation, sparing rivers for municipal supplies and fish.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:06
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Infinite Karma posted:Also it would be weird to build a desalination plant where the production of the water isn't factored into the overall water supply. If you don't need more fresh water than you have, why desalinate at all? And if you do need more fresh water than you have, it's not exactly optional to run the desalination plant. I would think California is a good example. They don't need desalination since they have roughly enough other water sources. But it would be pretty great if they weren't using those other sources so they should take all the "free" desalinated water that is available. So what is needed are desalination plants with relatively cheap CAPEX, minimal staffing needs and practical amounts of waste energy.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:11
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Saukkis posted:I would think California is a good example. They don't need desalination since they have roughly enough other water sources. But it would be pretty great if they weren't using those other sources so they should take all the "free" desalinated water that is available. So what is needed are desalination plants with relatively cheap CAPEX, minimal staffing needs and practical amounts of waste energy. IIRC California is facing a drought due to lack of snow in the mountains, so actually they do need more fresh water.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:15
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As far as I am aware, with Climate Change California is estimated to receive on average ~20% less perception.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:19
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Deteriorata posted:You run the desalination plant to soak up excess generating capacity as needed. The fresh water is dumped into a reservoir to be used when and as needed. Farmers can tap it for irrigation, sparing rivers for municipal supplies and fish. So you spend a whole lot of capital to build a desalination plant in order to subsidize things like growing almonds in places where it makes no sense to grow almonds? This makes no sense. It would be less wasteful to "soak up excess generating capacity" in a big resistor grid. Or just paying someone else to use your excess power. quote:As far as I am aware, with Climate Change California is estimated to receive on average ~20% less perception. California has a bunch of desalination plants under construction. Because they need water, not because they need to soak up excess generating capacity. Nuclear would be perfect for running desalination plants, but instead California uses fossil fuels. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Jan 19, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 00:22
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Pretty much every coastal area could use more desalinization plants, because the entire country is slowly draining all the regional underground water supplies and that's a huge deferred problem. There's a lot of good uses for excess power generation, as well as bad uses like crypto mining, and desalinization would certainly be useful.
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Jan 19, 2021 03:46
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Kaal posted:Pretty much every coastal area could use more desalinization plants, because the entire country is slowly draining all the regional underground water supplies and that's a huge deferred problem. There's a lot of good uses for excess power generation, as well as bad uses like crypto mining, and desalinization would certainly be useful. https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350876504713015296?s=20 You weren't kidding. 
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Jan 19, 2021 04:56
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Gabriel S. posted:https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350876504713015296?s=20 That's a great Twitter thread, thanks for sharing it.
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Jan 19, 2021 05:28
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Deteriorata posted:You run the desalination plant to soak up excess generating capacity as needed. The fresh water is dumped into a reservoir to be used when and as needed. Farmers can tap it for irrigation, sparing rivers for municipal supplies and fish. Here in Australia there are definitely parts of the country where if we knew there was going to be lots of intermittent but basically free energy it might be worth doing something like that.
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Jan 19, 2021 07:38
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Phanatic posted:People don't build an aluminum plant because they want it to sit idle *not* making aluminum, and you can't base a shitload of workers' work schedules on "hurry in now, the wind just picked up and it's time to make some aluminum." Aluminum production may not be the ideal use case. In Saudi Arabia and Australia there's plans for ammonia plants that run on renewables. Presumably designed with high variability in mind.
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Jan 19, 2021 09:10
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Senor Tron posted:Here in Australia there are definitely parts of the country where if we knew there was going to be lots of intermittent but basically free energy it might be worth doing something like that. Australia is too busy trying to preserve their coal and Natural Gas exports.
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Jan 19, 2021 19:22
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https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1354086634346733570?s=20 
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Jan 26, 2021 16:21
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Good. https://twitter.com/whatisnuclear/status/1354810318497607681?s=20 CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 28, 2021 |
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Jan 26, 2021 16:25
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Noticed this study, which might be of interest to the thread. The main gist is modeling a least-cost resource mix to reach net zero (or net negative) emissions by 2050. I was surprised that they found that preserving existing nuclear and gas capacity was found to be important, in that the gas generation gets dispatched less and less (down to about 10% capacity factor for combined cycle and even less for peakers) and it's cheaper to just offset the carbon by various other means instead of relying on pure battery storage or new nuclear or similar. Existing nuclear was preserved, but new nuclear was only really build in the scenario of constrained land for renewables. Even then, the buildout wouldn't be for decades.
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Feb 6, 2021 05:00
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Nuclear will likely remain a niche or uncommon technology but we really need to stop it from being replaced with gas even if it's cheaper. Subsidize it but don't retire plants early and hell try to see if there's anything we're able to do make them last longer. Is anyone well versed with the Keystone XL Pipeline? The pipeline is for Canadian Oil Sands along with drilling in North Dakota. Given what we know about renewables today and how they're even cost competitive without subsides what purpose does the pipeline serve? I'm asking because the type of oil extracted in the areas requires more input and quick search is showing a minimum of just $50 per barrel. Here's the kicker, we know that we're likely to hit peak oil in this decade. If the Keystone XL was completed wouldn't it eventually become a stranded asset because to me it doesn't seem economical at all and a terrible investment.
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Feb 10, 2021 01:10
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Oil from those areas is already extracted and distributed, the pipeline will just reduce the cost of international distribution. So it would help the oil industry kick the can down the road a bit, but yeah like everything else the pipeline would eventually become unused once those sites became unprofitable. It's profitable for them to do it because they'll reap those transport savings for many many years
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Feb 10, 2021 02:54
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This is a cross post from the electrical thread. OP is curious about the regular voltage fluctuations he sees on his monitoring software. Specifically, he wonders if it's related to connected solar generation.Combat Pretzel posted:Well, what I'm seeing is this (today's Vp-p isn't as wide): I know at one time some utility EE's posted here, curious if anyone had some insight.
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Feb 14, 2021 19:29
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Texas Power Grid is enjoying the weather: Wind is dropped, Gas is freezing and prices are skyrocketing. Their Nuclear Plants, however, are chugging along. https://twitter.com/HamWa07/status/1361375461826256899?s=20 CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 18:37
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It's almost like the dumb atoms gives no fucks about the weather 
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Feb 15, 2021 19:34
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Wibla posted:It's almost like the dumb atoms gives no fucks about the weather Yup. ERCOT's infrastructure is struggling though. Its Infrastructure Week!
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Feb 15, 2021 19:41
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Are there any structural engineers in the thread? What's the outcome for a city that isn't designed for continuous sub-zero temperatures like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc.? I know that pipes break but could anyone give me a run down of what this looks like long term for a major metropolitan area? The reason I'm asking because is that the entire US South Central is going to have put up with a much greater temperature variance which is one of the overlooked parts of climate change along with precipitation.
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Feb 15, 2021 20:54
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CommieGIR posted:Texas Power Grid is enjoying the weather: Wind is dropped, Gas is freezing and prices are skyrocketing. Note that the NRC reactor status page is only updated once a day, we'll see in a day or two if any NRC events were filed, but an ERCOT director said that some nuclear generation was impacted as well: quote:The extreme cold appears to have caught Texas’s highly decentralized electricity market by surprise. Power plants with a combined capacity of more than 34 gigawatts were forced offline overnight, including nuclear reactors, coal and gas generators and wind farms, Woodfin said. It’s not clear why, he added. I have to admit I'm always suspicious of these unspecified causes ever since this exact thing happened on the first weekend that ERCOT raised the price cap. It doesn't have to be full Enron level, just under-investing in expensive fossil plants knowing that if the cold brings it down you'll be reaping massive profits off your remaining assets would be enough.
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Feb 15, 2021 22:52
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Looks like Mexico is moving in the coal direction:quote:President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, has unveiled plans to buy nearly 2m tons of thermal coal from small producers like Rivera. He also plans to reactivate a pair of coal-fired plants on the Texas border, which were being wound down as natural gas and renewables took a more prominent role in Mexico’s energy mix.
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Feb 16, 2021 02:49
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FreeKillB posted:Looks like Mexico is moving in the coal direction: Lmao: The fact that he's also curtailing Renewables....what an idiot. Its practically a bargain to invest in renewables.
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Feb 16, 2021 02:50
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Trabisnikof posted:Note that the NRC reactor status page is only updated once a day, we'll see in a day or two if any NRC events were filed, but an ERCOT director said that some nuclear generation was impacted as well: Following up on this, looks like we did get a reactor trip at South Texas Unit 1: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2021/20210216en.html quote:"At 0526 [CST] on 02/15/2021, Unit 1 automatically tripped due to low steam generator levels. The low steam generator levels were due to loss of Feedwater pumps 11 and 13 (cause unknown).
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Feb 16, 2021 18:40
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Trabisnikof posted:Following up on this, looks like we did get a reactor trip at South Texas Unit 1: LMAO, apparently this is happening a lot, and I think I know why: All the machinery at Texas Nuclear plants, including the turbines, are open air  This is true for the Gas plants as well, so basically they are dealing with have to lose so much heat to the open air.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:49
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CommieGIR posted:LMAO, apparently this is happening a lot, and I think I know why: This is completely normal for plants built in the south, both nuclear and otherwise.
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Feb 17, 2021 01:51
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If I'm understanding the ERCOT price cap stuff correctly - which I may not be, I'm not at all in any of the industries involved - the only citizenry it impacts directly are people with variable-rate plans, right? Does it even impact all of those? What proportion of households are variable-rate? The stuff I'm skimming seems to suggest that it's more of a concern for businesses than households, but this is something I've never had to look into, as a fixed-rate-haver.
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Feb 17, 2021 02:12
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whether you have fixed or variable rates just determines *how* you pay, everyone is paying in the end, just for some people it'll be in the form of overall slightly higher rates spread out over the course of forever going forward.
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Feb 17, 2021 02:55
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I think the most ironic thing out of all of this isn't lovely politicians spinning this issue but things like the freaking Wall Street Journal putting this front and center as a failure of renewables. For a business focused newspaper to say that renewables are bad investment? 
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Feb 17, 2021 04:08
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:I think the most ironic thing out of all of this isn't lovely politicians spinning this issue but things like the freaking Wall Street Journal putting this front and center as a failure of renewables. The serious business types I know have considered the WSJ a rag for well over a decade now. Everything Murdoch touches turns to poo poo. Most of them read The Financial Times now
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Feb 17, 2021 04:20
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Ah, I had forgotten he had bought them out. I will admit, I do find some of their reporting insightful but the editorial section is generally awful.
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Feb 17, 2021 04:27
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MrYenko posted:This is completely normal for plants built in the south, both nuclear and otherwise. In Florida and Texas, yes. Most other Southern plants have enclosed Turbine Halls. Hell, Palo Verde, which is hotter and drier, has enclosed turbine halls.
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Feb 17, 2021 05:12
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Seems perfectly reasonable for the rugged individual executives of Texas to think they don’t need to spend the money for some high falutin’ shed for their turbines. I don’t know if there’s a “GridOps” thread anywhere, but I had to share this take. It was a reply to a friend of mine’s tweet. I don’t know the person and they’re identity isn’t important so I cropped that.  I know Texas is the big story, but last weekend’s snow and ice has thoroughly hosed the greater Portland area. PGE has over 200 miles of transmission line down. It was very hard for me not to reply “do you want power back this week or in a few years?” This is the 2nd time in 20 years of living in the same house that we’ve had an extended outage, the previous time was in August during the fires.
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Feb 17, 2021 07:11
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