Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Regarding the 200-300 km^2 of solar installation to replace one 4000MW coal plant:

The nearest coal power station to where I live has a total capacity of 1690MW. Its presence prevents most of the potential uses of more than 300 km^3 of land around it. Mind you, that's just the power plant and not the mines or railroads that feed it. And it's losing money because it runs on coal.

Everybody wants the lights to come on and the air conditioning to work, but nobody wants to live near a coal plant or eat things that are grown nearby. I dare say that solar installations don't have that kind of repellent zone around them.
 
Chalo said:
Rqegarding the 200-300 km^2 of solar installation to replace one 4000MW coal plant:


Everybody wants the lights to come on and the air conditioning to work, but nobody wants to live near a coal plant or eat things that are grown nearby. I dare say that solar installations don't have that kind of repellent zone around them.
Theres the pollutants no on3 addresses and dumping into our own homes. Fl6 ash, high in mteta.# a crap is utilized by concrete. Companies an$ we pay dumping free material, often hign in Mg and subjec5 to spalling. Once again ignoran5 consumers pay for poison.
 
Hillhater said:
This continues to puzzel me as to what is going on.
Continuous spurts of 30MW in random, frequent ( almost continuous) patterns , wit only short breaks of a few hours to charge again ?
If its testing , its a very odd method,....
If its grid demand initiated, Even more strange ?
Anybody care to suggest possible explanations ?
You are seeing frequency support or perhaps voltage support.

There are three things that ESS'es do for grid:

1) Frequency support, so a sudden load does not slow down the prime movers in a power plant. Slowing down the prime movers is seen as a dip in frequency, which causes problems with systemwide synchronization and transformers.

2) Voltage support, so that sudden loads do not cause too-large voltage excursions. Over a longer time (seconds) the grid can adapt with tap changes and the like.

3) Load shifting, so unneeded generation at low load times can cover loads during high load times.

1) needs power for tens of milliseconds to seconds 2) needs power for seconds. 3) needs power for hours.
 
Yes, i had considered that also , but...
The "discharge pattern" doesnt seem to have any correlation to the the wind farm generation that this battery is supporting, http://nem.mwheeler.org/stations#HDWF3. Which sort of has a 24 hr cycle pattern.
...so i cannot se it being load shifting or voltage support ( many of the discharges are at high windfarm output levels.
Frequency support for the grid is possible, ..and can be a big income earner , but then i wonder ...why now ? ...what were they doing before the battery was available ? ( likely using the spinning inertia of the standby gas plants),.. But those gas generators are still spinning on standby to fill in for the load variations from the wind plants.
Someone on the "inside" will eventually let us know im sure.
 
Hillhater said:
Frequency support for the grid is possible, ..and can be a big income earner , but then i wonder ...why now ? ...what were they doing before the battery was available ?
They were likely running their baseload plants further from maximum power so they had more margin.

BYD did a case study of a system in Brazil where they added their 1MW battery containers. Before they added the batteries the larger power plants could only run at 93% capacity, so that generation margin was available. After they added the batteries they could run at 98% capacity, which means more generation and higher efficiencies.
 
Here is an interesting data log / graph of the battery charge rate vs time and power cost..
http://nemlog.com.au/nem/unit/HPRL1/
It seems they charge intermittently too, also at very variable charge rates of 5 - 10 MW for short pulses ?.?
I will post a graphic in a moment ..

EDIT...
I think i am beginning to figure out what is happening.
This is the Discharge vs Price timeline for the Big battery...http://nemlog.com.au/nem/unit/HPRG1/
....you can clearly see how they are selling power to the grid at higher price (>$50) points, whilst from the first graph it shows the charging times correlate with low price (<$50) periods.
So it would appear they are simply playing the market price variations to make some money !
 
So where did the previous post on Fusion go? Anyway, here is a good presentation on the newest tech coming out of MIT.
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https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4
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There is a new superconductor ReBCo Barium/ copper. the ARC reactor uses a molten salt blanket which collects the heat energy and breeds H3 from Li. And a serviceable, modular construction is proposed for replacing the neutron damaged inner walls periodically.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor
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It seems that all of the money poured in ITER is obsolete due to the magnets and the fragile blanket and lack of serviceability. And it is all so complex. Probably won't get it done in time.
 
Punx0r said:
"Thebeastie", do you have a reading comprehension problem? Or do you just ignore when someone replies to your posts? It seems you just copy & paste a load of bumpf from some other website, because you posted this a few days ago:

Jil said:
TheBeastie said:
Topaz Solar Farm ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm ) in the desert of the USA. 25km2 sized. 2016 generation: 1,265,805MWh (great year 2016, 2017 looks to be a lot lower)
Average power 144MW = (1,265,805MWhours / 8760_hours_in_a_year)
Average coal or nuclear power station: average output 3927MW = (34,402,000MWh / 8760)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paluel_Nuclear_Power_Plant
3927MW / 144MW = 27 times more power.

25km2 x 27 = 675km2 of land covered in solar panels to generate the same average power (if you have a super huge battery as well, that will require a lot of land and a lot of energy to dispose of once used)

Sorry to come again ;) but please stop using old data for solar energy.
The ratio easily achievable today is 1 MWp/ha for solar fixed tilt, and 0.5 MWp/ha for single-axis trackers (the technology mainly used in countries with high irradiation).
In the first case, with average irradiation you can count on 1500 MWh/MWp/year of energy produced, in the second case (trackers) 2000 MWh/MWp/year. With 99.5% availability. For nuclear and coal plants, it's more around 90%.

So it makes for fixed-tilt 150 GWh/km2/year, and for trackers 100 GWh/km2/year, for average sites (for Nevada with high irradiation it will be more).

If you compare to a nuclear or coal plant of 4000 MW with 90% availability, the equivalent production of 31,500 GWh will require between 200 and 300 km2 of land (and probably 50% less for Nevada). Not 675. By the way what surface of land does require a 4000 MW plant for coal mining ?


As you can see, your claim about land area required for PV was debunked. So, what did you post next?

TheBeastie said:
No one seems to blink an eyelid at the real world statistics on solar generation and size that prove you need a solar farm that's about 600km2 to replace a single power-station.


Yep, just repeated the exact same thing again. It's like anything that doesn't support your existing, denialist beliefs is simply ignored. Or are you just trolling?
It goes without saying that its all about real world generation statistics. I chose two REAL power-station projects, a nuclear power-station and a real solar-farm.
small.jpg

If we are going to talk about stuff, in theory, why not quote the power of a man-made artificial star via a fusion reactor like Sendler just mentioned? Or even the Bill Gates Terrapower nuclear reactor at least its based on proven fission and safer, as well as using nuclear waste as fuel and only needs to be refueled every 60 years and Bill Gates promises will be cheaper than coal power-station generation.

Of course thats whats great about examining the biggest most expensive solar projects in the world, we can see via the EIA data summarized on Wikipedia that it just takes seconds to see 675km2 solar farm to replace a conventional power-station is silly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm
The $2.4bill x 27 = $72.9 billion for build cost let alone the close to 90 year build time estimate.
But the biggest one of course is building a battery that would be truly epic.
Maintaining a 675km2 solar farm would of course be quite unviable as well. It all sums up to epic environmental vandalism, these solar projects in the USA were supposed to show us all it worked but now they are examples of failure and damage to the environment https://t.co/EavegkuCbc

The chief scientific adviser in the UK said powering the UK with renewables is a joke. He talks about how the theoretical numbers just don't work in the real world.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/03/idea-of-renewables-powering-uk-is-an-appalling-delusion-david-mackay?CMP=share_btn_fb

https://youtu.be/sCyidsxIDtQ
[youtube]sCyidsxIDtQ[/youtube]

Specific mention of being delusional about solar
https://youtu.be/sCyidsxIDtQ?t=9m30s
 
Hillhater said:
Wow ! ..you really have to be sober and keen to take that all in sendler !
Not a casual listen for the average joe.

Those that can must focus to elevate from the norm with a system view to offer guidance as we plan ahead for the biggest change humankind has ever had to endure. The end of fossil fuel.
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I'm afraid that Fusion is just way too complex to ever make it work.
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And cooling pond water levels for solid nuclear fuel rods must be maintained for three years before dry casking and will dry up and burn if abandoned in a society crash. So I have concerns about using solid fuel rods with water. But I would seriously consider investigating the possibilties of the new molten salt fuel rod technology from Moltex which runs at atmosheric pressure in the fuel tubes and with the salt coolant and is walk away safe with passive convective air cooling.
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https://youtu.be/-IiIdG0asbM
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It would ideally be much more pleasant to have a nuclear energy bridge to help get us ( "them") through the fossil peak to a much smaller and simpler way of life that can still thrive on real time solar flows.
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Solar passive and panels will one day power "A" civilization. Just not this one.
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Run the numbers.
 
TheBeastie said:
If we are going to talk about stuff, in theory, why not quote the power of a man-made artificial star via a fusion reactor like Sendler just mentioned? Or even the Bill Gates Terrapower nuclear reactor at least its based on proven fission and safer, as well as using nuclear waste as fuel and only needs to be refueled every 60 years and Bill Gates promises will be cheaper than coal power-station generation.
Great! I am all for research; sounds like some great theoretical work. But:
He talks about how the theoretical numbers just don't work in the real world.
So let's use technologies that DO work in the real world, like solar, while we spend money researching those cool future technologies.
 
UK solar irradiance for November, December, and January is 1/9th of what it gets for May, June, July.
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1-s2.0-S0960148114002857-gr3.jpg

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148114002857
 
sendler2112 said:
Did you watch the video? He mentions the term "green washing".
Yep. And nuclear will be "too cheap to meter." That was the claim by the chairman of the atomic energy commission in 1954, over 60 years ago. Today solar is considerably cheaper.

Don't believe everything you see on an Internet video.
 
Putting the Worlds Biggest Grid Battery into perspective..
Teslas "BFB" is installed in South Australia, a state with very low power demand,..1.5 -2.0 GW on average, so the battery size should be most useful relative to the demand.
SA is also our most progressive state for renewables, having shut down all its coal generation plants, and installed 1.7 GW of wind farms and some solar etc. SA claims to be our cleanest generator of power with over 50% RE supply.
This is a snalshot of the last two days of power usage/generation in SA..
The LH scale is %, but you can take it that 100% is no more than 2 GW.
The legend tells what the colors represent, but i will explain..
The green at the bottom is the Wind farm output
The Red in the missle is the Gas generators backing up the wind plants
The purple/blue at the top is the interstate feed from the nabouring state inputing power to support the wind farms.
The tiny fringe/blobs in places, of Orange, under the blue line, at the top edge of the red part, is the Battery contribution "time shifting" power to back up the wind farms !
(But remember , ..at times during this period the battery is also taking power from the wind farms to charge itself up. !)
Not a huge contribution to the overall situation !
Anybody care to estimate how big a battery needs to be to make a significant contribution , even with this small total demand ?
GatkRq.png
 
I bet it would fit in a space of a single Costco store, and if located at an existing GW level sub-station it would have minimal infrastructure cost.
 
billvon said:
Today solar is considerably cheaper.
Three months per year, when energy demand is the highest, solar basically doesn't work at all for weeks at a time in the UK. Or North East USA/ Canada. Or Russia.
You can't believe everything you read (write?) in heavily biased solar trade magazines. Open your eyes to what scientists are presenting in their videos.
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1-s2.0-S0960148114002857-gr3.jpg

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Hillhater said:
SA is also our most progressive state for renewables, having shut down all its coal generation plants, and installed 1.7 GW of wind farms and some solar etc. SA claims to be our cleanest generator of power with over 50% RE supply.
It might have a claimed 50% renewables capacity but that graphic shows the vast majority of energy is from gas. Your 1.7 GW of wind is barely peaking to .7 GW and is averaging not quite .3 GW. Less than 20% capacity factor and highly intermittent.
 
Yes, it shows not just how trivial a 129 MWh battery is in the situation of even a small grid demand, but also how ineffective a "installed capacity" of 1.7GW of wind is also...it can generate 1.7GW at times, but not often, and not consistently.
Ad no matter how much "installed capacity" of wind(or solar) you have, there will be times when it generates nothing !.....so an alternative 100% backup generation source will be required.
 
sendler2112 said:
UK solar irradiance for November, December, and January is 1/9th of what it gets for May, June, July.

Well that certainly explains why it gets colder and darker during the Winter here. I was wondering what that was...

You're right, being overly reliant on solar during the winter if you live at high or low latitude and don't import energy is flawed. I don't think anyone at all would argue with you there.

I believe coal plants suffer a similar problem if they are located somewhere with no coal.

TheBeastie, I give up with that guy - he is impervious to sense or reason. Challenged on why he keeps requoting out-dated data from Topaz and he responds with a photo of some solar panels partially over-grown with weeds. What an insurmountable problem that clear renders the whole concept of PV flawed. Also interesting that he earlier claimed PV had a net-negative effect on the climate because solar farms obliterated plant growth :roll:

I understand the problem with some of you guys: all technology has it's downsides and RE is no different. Most folk see fossil fuels are the worser evil, but you see no problem with fossil (because it's the status quo and you deny anthropogenic climate change), therefore RE is an unnecessary solution to what you perceive as an unbroken system.

Unfortunately the effects of climate change are already being felt in many parts of the world and it's only just getting started - we're locked in to a lot more.

Oh, and coal is definitely on the way out. Half of Europe's coal plants are already losing money as they are out-competed due to carbon pricing and low cost RE. Expect the majority to close in the next 10 years:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/08/death-spiral-half-of-europes-coal-plants-are-losing-money
 
Punx0r said:
out-dated data from Topaz
What big changes in panel technology have occurred since Topaz that make it obsolete?. It and Solar Star are the only examples we have of actual published data and Cap Cost of large farms. Most other farms seem to be withholding information that could judge them. Pricing for a farm in Dryden, NY completed in 2015 is still running $5 Million for a 2 MW and it is doing 15.7% of capacity annually. So, $15.92/ Watt average for the year. Probably close to Zero production for the last 5 days since we have had continual snow fall.
 
Punx0r said:
I believe coal plants suffer a similar problem if they are located somewhere with no coal.....
Well actually NO.
....one of the often overlooked advantages of coal is that it can easily be transported and stored relatively cheaply...no special containers required. And most coal generators stockpile several weeks of fuel to guard against supply chain issues...even if they are not built on a coal source.

.....Most folk see fossil fuels are the worser evil, but you see no problem with fossil (because it's the status quo and you deny anthropogenic climate change), therefore RE is an unnecessary solution to what you perceive as an unbroken system......
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Oh, and coal is definitely on the way out. Half of Europe's coal plants are already losing money as they are out-competed due to carbon pricing and low cost RE. Expect the majority to close in the next 10 years:
There are many problems with fossil fuels, not least being their ultimate exhaustion, but i believe that currently it is not possible to maintain a practical society without them.
Let us see how the pioneers of RE (Germany, Denmark, SAu, etc) make out in the future as they shut down those coal plants (but keep the Gas plants no doubt). How would the UK do if it didnt have the Nuclear, gas, and wood chip fired generators ? ...not to mention those interconnectors to France's nuclear power ?
...Yes, the next 10 years will be very interesting!
Of course coal is becoming less economical due to the political and operational manipulation of the markets and the artificial subsidies on RE. But, it is far from being deleted from the power generation scene, Countries that are not hamstrung by false political agendas are clear in their need for 100's of new coal power plants...Why ?..
..because they are the most practical and economical way of making significant ammounts of reliable power .
The RE worshippers appear to be "All or nothing" thinkers...blinded by the new technology offerings, with no consideration for what issues might arrise.
I prefer to look at the reality of the options, and seek a practical way forward that doesnt sacrifice the progress we have achieved so far.
 
sendler2112 said:
Three months per year, when energy demand is the highest, solar basically doesn't work at all for weeks at a time in the UK. Or North East USA/ Canada. Or Russia.
Right - but we are talking about electricity here.

Peak summer electric load in New York State: 33 gigawatts
Peak winter electric load in New York State: 24 gigawatts

Sounds like the increased availability of solar in the summer matches that pretty well.

http://www.nyiso.com/public/webdocs/markets_operations/services/planning/Documents_and_Resources/Planning_Data_and_Reference_Docs/Data_and_Reference_Docs/2016_Load__Capacity_Data_Report.pdf
You can't believe everything you read (write?) in heavily biased solar trade magazines.
Definitely true. Nor can you believe everything you read on denier sites, or on FOX News or Breitbart. Journals like Nature and Science, and periodicals like Science News and MIT Technology Review are much better sources. Better yet, go to the source (as I did above.)
 
sendler2112 said:
What big changes in panel technology have occurred since Topaz that make it obsolete?
Mainly CdTe panels. CdTe panels are much less efficient than crystalline panels - but when the panels were ordered (2010) they were the cheapest option, because they were going for about $2 a watt and crystalline panels were going for $2.50-$3.00. In addition, CdTe panels have a wearout mechanism that means they are only good for a decade or so; their efficiency drops quite steeply as compared to crystalline panels (which see almost no degradation over time.)

Today crystalline panels are going for under $1.00 a watt, and so would have been the clear choice. It would also have decreased racking and wiring costs due to the higher areal efficiency.
 
billvon said:
Right - but we are talking about electricity here.

Peak summer electric load in New York State: 33 gigawatts
Peak winter electric load in New York State: 24 gigawatts

Sounds like the increased availability of solar in the summer matches that pretty well.

Yes. We are discussing electricity only for now. 50 years until liquid fuel is priced out of reach. Maybe 80 years left for gas heat and electric if we frac every drop. Then 5X the need of current electricity demand. But solar generation does not meet demand in the winter. It is not a good match as MacKay and many others with open minds that have run the numbers have stated. Solar farm output will be 1/9th it's summer value all winter long all across NE USA and Northern Europe with many days on end near Zero.
 
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