Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[Hillhater]

That's like saying that no bicycle is designed to be ridden uphill because it puts far more stress on the rear wheel and cassette. There is indeed more stress - but bicycles are in fact designed to be ridden uphill, and design margins are chosen to accommodate that. Even if the chain/cassette would last longer if they always stayed on flat ground.

Not the best analogy bill...
These days (post “Schwinn” ?) bicycles are indeed specifically designed for primary purposes..flat road, hilly road, downhill, Xcountry, beach, etc etc.... with custom equipment ( frame, gearing, wheels, brakes, etc ) to suit the application. Gear cassettes , chain and chainwheels are significantly different in material and design depending on the use.
I know nothing about Gas turbine design, but i would be very surprised if they are not customised to suit the intended application.

 

[billvon]

Not exactly. Most of the big gas turbines are leased from GE and Westinghouse, including their maintenance. Stop/start cycles are a significant factor in your lease price. If Specialized charged you and extra $400 for a bike because you wanted to use it in the hills instead of flatland then it would be the same.

They do - they are called downhill bikes. And they do charge you extra. It would be silly to claim that such bikes weren't designed for hills IMO - although you could claim that they wore out faster when you used them that way.

California, isn't that the state with all of the brown outs?

Nope. We're a little better than average in terms of grid reliability (20th most reliable out of 50 states) and we haven't had a major outage here since 2011.

 

[billvon]

These days (post “Schwinn” ?) bicycles are indeed specifically designed for primary purposes..flat road, hilly road, downhill, Xcountry, beach, etc etc.... with custom equipment ( frame, gearing, wheels, brakes, etc ) to suit the application. Gear cassettes , chain and chainwheels are significantly different in material and design depending on the use. I know nothing about Gas turbine design, but i would be very surprised if they are not customised to suit the intended application.

Exactly my point. It would be silly to say that downhill bikes weren't designed for hills, just as it's silly to say that turbines used for peakers / fast startup CCS plants weren't designed for daily start/stop cycles. IMO of course.

 

[Punx0r]

"you'll never have a turbine that can start/stop rapidly several times a day!"

"You'll never reliably get 1HP/cubic inch from a piston engine!"

"You'll never replace the horse!"

"Man cannot physically survive travelling at 100mph!"

"You'll bever be able to fly one of those contraptions across the atlantic!"

"It's a sound BARRIER, dummy!"

Ad nauseum...

 

[TheBeastie]

New article out from RNE, below...
Basically, RNE is saying its evil that solar-roof owners can't force their power into the grid and demand money even though the grid owners do NOT want their "crappy power", which apparently just causes grid unreliability/costs for the grid owners.

Fact is, if the roof-solar owner's electricity is so valuable why don't they just keep it for themselves? Just dumb argument from the solar-roof owners in my opinion.
Also, note I am permanently banned from the comments section on the RNE website, all I did was post some >Wikipedia URLs on renewable energy< data showing how poorly RE performs..
RNE is just a front for the big renewable energy subsidy mining industry and the attached investment hedge funds.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/networks-want-to-hit-household-solar-exports-with-extra-grid-charges-64553
The main lobby group representing Australia’s electricity and gas networks has renewed its push to hit households exporting solar back to the grid with additional grid charges – to the horror of some consumer groups and industry experts.

Also, in relation to the series of ABC video/YouTube reports on 100,000's of bad/failing roof-solar panels in Australia https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89002&p=1469814#p1469814 ... I came across this Australian based Facebook group called "Crap Solar", its just full of people complaining/photos about their crap roof solar system. It's a remarkably busy/active group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1453886731514406/

 

[furcifer]

Not exactly. Most of the big gas turbines are leased from GE and Westinghouse, including their maintenance. Stop/start cycles are a significant factor in your lease price. If Specialized charged you and extra $400 for a bike because you wanted to use it in the hills instead of flatland then it would be the same.

They do - they are called downhill bikes. And they do charge you extra. It would be silly to claim that such bikes weren't designed for hills IMO - although you could claim that they wore out faster when you used them that way.

California, isn't that the state with all of the brown outs?

Nope. We're a little better than average in terms of grid reliability (20th most reliable out of 50 states) and we haven't had a major outage here since 2011.

So Specialized prices bikes based on how YOU operate them? Wow, I did not know that.

 

[furcifer]

"you'll never have a turbine that can start/stop rapidly several times a day!"

No.

Unless you can violate the laws of thermodynamics and the physical properties of materials.

Because turbines run hot, and metal expands and contracts with changes in temperature, they are designed to run hot and in the expanded state.

There's no getting around the fact that you need to cool metal slowly. Especially in high precision machines like turbines.

Just because you think it should behave like you want doesn't change 250 years of science and technology.

Sacrifices can be made in design but they almost always come at a cost to efficiency.

 

[furcifer]

That's like saying that no bicycle is designed to be ridden uphill because it puts far more stress on the rear wheel and cassette. There is indeed more stress - but bicycles are in fact designed to be ridden uphill, and design margins are chosen to accommodate that. Even if the chain/cassette would last longer if they always stayed on flat ground.

Not the best analogy bill...
These days (post “Schwinn” ?) bicycles are indeed specifically designed for primary purposes..flat road, hilly road, downhill, Xcountry, beach, etc etc.... with custom equipment ( frame, gearing, wheels, brakes, etc ) to suit the application. Gear cassettes , chain and chainwheels are significantly different in material and design depending on the use.
I know nothing about Gas turbine design, but i would be very surprised if they are not customised to suit the intended application.

No.

Schwin probably makes more bikes in a day than there are 250MW turbines in the world.

Just because you can customize your car engine doesn't mean there are dozens of rocket engines for you to choose from.

It takes billions of dollars to design machines like this. And like I said, you still have to live within the characteristics like how hot your fuel burns, thermal expansion etc

eta: I realize it's foolish to say anything is impossible. it's perhaps possible to create a new alloy that can contract and expand rapidly without deformation. that's how SpaceX got around one of this issues with their closed cycle rocket engines (which are turbines), they designed an alloy to withstand the heat. But this is actually a basic characteristic in all engines, they're designed to run and most of the wear and tear comes from turning them on and off. When you're dealing with a 3000F chunk of metal the size of your kitchen spinning at 20 000 rpm, patience and not technology have proven to be the answer.

But it's equally foolish to think that technology is going to save us if we just put our minds to it. ICE fuel efficiency has improved since the 70's, but we're facing another fuel crisis anyways. There are design limitations that do in fact make things possible, or impossible.

 

[furcifer]

Nope. We're a little better than average in terms of grid reliability (20th most reliable out of 50 states) and we haven't had a major outage here since 2011.

Nonsense. That's like saying my car is reliable because there's a transit system. You can't rely on a system that doesn't produce what you need.

From what I read in 2017, California produced 203000 GWh, and used 295000GWh. You're running a deficit, which by any account means you can't reliably produce what you need. If you could, you would.

 

[jimw1960]

"you'll never have a turbine that can start/stop rapidly several times a day!"

No.

Unless you can violate the laws of thermodynamics and the physical properties of materials.

Because turbines run hot, and metal expands and contracts with changes in temperature, they are designed to run hot and in the expanded state.

There's no getting around the fact that you need to cool metal slowly. Especially in high precision machines like turbines.

Just because you think it should behave like you want doesn't change 250 years of science and technology.

Sacrifices can be made in design but they almost always come at a cost to efficiency.

That's just flat out wrong. When I was in the Air Force a lifetime ago, we used turbine generators to power on aircraft while they were on the ground. They would spin up to full power in less than a minute, we'd run out preflight checks, shut the turbine down when finished, move on to the next aircraft and repeat. These things lasted forever and were super reliable, and put out some serious power. This was in the 1980s. I'm sure turbines today are infinitely better and more efficient.

 

[furcifer]

"you'll never have a turbine that can start/stop rapidly several times a day!"

No.

Unless you can violate the laws of thermodynamics and the physical properties of materials.

Because turbines run hot, and metal expands and contracts with changes in temperature, they are designed to run hot and in the expanded state.

There's no getting around the fact that you need to cool metal slowly. Especially in high precision machines like turbines.

Just because you think it should behave like you want doesn't change 250 years of science and technology.

Sacrifices can be made in design but they almost always come at a cost to efficiency.

That's just flat out wrong. When I was in the Air Force a lifetime ago, we used turbine generators to power on aircraft while they were on the ground. They would spin up to full power in less than a minute, we'd run out preflight checks, shut the turbine down when finished, move on to the next aircraft and repeat. These things lasted forever and were super reliable, and put out some serious power. This was in the 1980s. I'm sure turbines today are infinitely better and more efficient.

Because a turbine is a turbine? Lol, ok.

GE's latest 650MW monster is about 60% efficient. How efficient was the miniature turbine your trying to compare it to because you have no idea how things scale up to? I doubt it was 6% efficient, which would be 10 time, still a lot less the "infinite".

I have to say, this is about as naive as saying because your 40 year old fishing boat gets 10 miles to the gallon and stops in 20 feet so should any Supertanker out on the ocean. I mean you know right, you have a boat and that's a boat. A boat's a boat!

 

[Punx0r]

In an earlier post you said the problem was with the steam recovery turbine, but above you say the problem is metal at 3000°F, which would be the combustion turbine. Which is it?

Your arguments are predicated on designs, materials and manufacturing techniques not ever improving. How much credibility would have had if you'd been preaching modern specific outputs and EGTs in Frank Whittle's day? Turbine blades grown from a single crystal was fantasy not so long ago. Ceramics? Far too fragile!

Yes, a gas plant optimised for highest possible efficiency at the expense of being suited to continuous running was great in the days when everything was about baseload power. Open-cycle gas plants throttle at will but efficiency sucks. It's like comparing an F1 piston engine which is seized solid at room temp with a 2-smoke lawnmower engine - complete opposite ends of the spectrum. It's a poor imagine that can't conceive a compromise with middling efficiency intended to cycle on-off once a day.

 

[furcifer]

I think the boat analogy is probably the easiest for people to understand.

Just because you can make your fishing boat stop and start on a dime 50 times a day does not mean you can do the same thing with a freighter.

I think it's worth mentioning that the disel engines in those freighters are also the most efficient ICE's in the world. Why?

You might think boat engine builders are just better at it than VW or Mercedes but you'd be wrong. They aren't better, it's a matter of scale.

In part this is the same reason why you can drop and ant from 100 times it's height and it walks away unharmed, but you can't build an ant suit and drop a man from 600 feet and expect him to walk away.

The physics of this is pretty complicated. Fluidynamics and thermodynamics of a system just doesn't scale up in a linear manner. Or down for that matter. You can make some pretty small ICE engines but they aren't very efficient, even if you could make them identical to larger ones.

 

[furcifer]

In an earlier post you said the problem was with the steam recovery turbine, but above you say the problem is metal at 3000°F, which would be the combustion turbine. Which is it?

Your arguments are predicated on designs, materials and manufacturing techniques not ever improving. How much credibility would have had if you'd been preaching modern specific outputs and EGTs in Frank Whittle's day? Turbine blades grown from a single crystal was fantasy not so long ago. Ceramics? Far too fragile!

Yes, a gas plant optimised for highest possible efficiency at the expense of being suited to continuous running was great in the days when everything was about baseload power. Open-cycle gas plants throttle at will but efficiency sucks. It's like comparing an F1 piston engine which is seized solid at room temp with a 2-smoke lawnmower engine - complete opposite ends of the spectrum. It's a poor imagine that can't conceive a compromise with middling efficiency intended to cycle on-off once a day.

The wear and tear is a problem for both, but yes it's more so with the steam turbine in a cogen plant.

You'd be fine. The physics of this has been around for hundreds of years! Carnot was born a long time ago.

The techniques improve, so do materials. But these improvements taper off over time. You'll see jumps from say 10 to 50 percent in a decade, then 25 years to go from 50 to 60 then 50 years to go from 60 to 63.

That's just a made up example. But it's similar to how ICE efficiency has improved. Now ICE efficiency is so high when it comes to mileage you're hitting a wall with drag coefficient.

Unless you change the density of air itself getting something like a pick-up to do 100 miles per gallon is next to impossible, even with carbon fiber, fuel injection etc.

There are limits. That's not the same as saying they can't be improved. For the most part I see a lot of people comparing invention from the past to innovation today.

Eta: i noticed the last part of your post. If you recall I did say it's possible to modify things but they almost always come at a cost to efficiency. If the goal is to reduce consumption it's basically the same as improving efficiency. I dont think this is a satisfactory solution under the current state of affairs. The last thing we want to do is start running things rich.

 

[furcifer]

From the GE HA series maintenance manual. https://www.ge.com/content/dam/gepower-pgdp/global/en_US/documents/technical/unused%20assets/hdgt-operating-maintenance-considerations-report.pdf

Basically the first chapter:

Service Factors
While GE does not subscribe to the equivalency of starts to hours,
there are equivalencies within a wear mechanism that must be
considered. As shown in Figure 8, influences such as fuel type and
quality, firing temperature setting, and the amount of steam or
water injection are considered with regard to the hours-based
criteria. Startup rate and the number of trips are considered with
regard to the starts-based criteria. In both cases, these influences
may reduce the maintenance intervals.

For the most part it's a direct correlation, they're just saying it's not quite as easy as that. Basically your service life is based on start cycles or run time.
Fast starts also depreciate your service life by about 1/2. For the most part peakers are running warm starts since it takes days to properly cool down a turbine for something like service. If you look down there's a service factor based on running peak at 1.7.

But like I said, these turbines are designed for continuous operation. As are all turbines. Anything else depreciates service life. Even letting them sit and do nothing is worse than operating them continuously. This is an inherent characteristic of turbines, it is very well known fact.

It's a general rule for most engines. It just much more pronounced in turbines for the reasons I've already mentioned. Once you get something that's designed to spin spinning it's a lot easier to keep it spinning.

 

[jimw1960]

From the GE HA series maintenance manual. https://www.ge.com/content/dam/gepower-pgdp/global/en_US/documents/technical/unused%20assets/hdgt-operating-maintenance-considerations-report.pdf

Basically the first chapter:

Service Factors
While GE does not subscribe to the equivalency of starts to hours,
there are equivalencies within a wear mechanism that must be
considered. As shown in Figure 8, influences such as fuel type and
quality, firing temperature setting, and the amount of steam or
water injection are considered with regard to the hours-based
criteria. Startup rate and the number of trips are considered with
regard to the starts-based criteria. In both cases, these influences
may reduce the maintenance intervals.

From the same GE manual you linked to:

"The effect of peaking-fast starts on the maintenance interval
depends on the gas turbine model, the unit configuration, and
the particular start characteristics. For example, simple cycle
7F.03 units with fast start capability can perform a peaking start
in which the unit is brought from light-off to full load in less than
15 minutes. Conversely, simple cycle 6B and other smaller frame
units can perform conventional starts that are less than 15
minutes without affecting any maintenance factors. "

So, it's pretty clear these gas turbine generators come in different flavors and some a specifically designed to have a lot of starts and stops. Naturally, just as with a car, more stopping and starting is bound to reduce the total hours of running lifetime, but not by so much as to make it unfeasible. Your first post on the topic made it sound impossible to use a gas turbine for peaking, when there are thousands of them already in operation.

 

[billvon]

So, it's pretty clear these gas turbine generators come in different flavors and some a specifically designed to have a lot of starts and stops.

Yep. We have two of them. They've worked great for us over the years.

 

[jimw1960]

Anyway, gas peakers are probably on their way out in the next 10 years, as discussed in this newsletter from GE, who should know because they sell gas turbines:
https://www.ge.com/power/transform/article.transform.articles.2018.oct.storage-threat-to-peaker-plants

"Peakers are expensive," Kann said. "Energy storage is starting to get very close to the point where it can just beat a gas peaker, head-to-head, purely on an economic basis."

and

"I can't see a reason why we should ever build a gas peaker again in the US after, say, 2025," Shayle Kann, a senior adviser to the energy research firms GTM Research

 

[furcifer]

So, it's pretty clear these gas turbine generators come in different flavors and some a specifically designed to have a lot of starts and stops. Naturally, just as with a car, more stopping and starting is bound to reduce the total hours of running lifetime, but not by so much as to make it unfeasible. Your first post on the topic made it sound impossible to use a gas turbine for peaking, when there are thousands of them already in operation.

No. I believe you are confused. I never said anything about the start time. I'm talking about starts. Which is a stop/start cycle but we normally don't refer to it this way in the industry because it's implied and there's really nothing you can do to modify the cool down process.

Of course people would understand this if they just listened. TURBINES ARE DESIGNED TO RUN. That also means they are DESIGNED TO BE HOT. So you can get them HOT fast, but COOLING THEM DOWN, SOMETHING THEY AREN'T DESIGNED FOR takes a very long and controlled process.

Again, taking a turbine from ambient to operating temperature in 15 minutes is easy, although not ideal. Taking a turbine from operating temperature to ambient in 15 minutes would completely destroy it. Taking a turbine to operating temperature over an hour or so is usually ideal. Taking a turbine from operating temperature to ambient in an hour or so would DESTROY it.

This design limitation is based mostly in metallurgy, although fluid dynamics plays a part as well. You can heat metal pretty quick without changing the physical properties. Cooling, or quenching metal drastically alters its makeup.

You obviously didn't read my first post because I said I got my operating time at a 140MW peaker (well actually it is now, at the time we were a contracted plant with black start and the sister plant was a peaker). And I've noted on several occasions the importance of natural gas plants in providing peak demand for another 80 years. So if that's what you read then you have very poor comprehension.

For clarity what I'm saying is the process and cost of running natural gas peakers isn't factored into the cost or the losses when we talk about renewables. If you've got a grid that running a lot of wind and solar, if the wind stops or the sun ducks behind a cloud, it's usually going to be a NG turbine picking up the slack. Those oscillations in demand mean more wear and tear on a turbine BECAUSE TURBINES ARE DESIGNED TO RUN CONTINUOUS, and considerable losses when you turn them off and need to dump the heat and steam generated into the atmosphere.

Those costs, the ones from added maintenance and loss of efficiency drive up the price of the electricity they generate. This artificiality inflates the price of NG and coal generation, making it seem like solar and wind are on par, but they aren't. It's the forced regulation and inclusion making it seem that way.

It's a bit of a slippery slope, because if you're in a market where you need peakers to come online because solar and wind don't want to play, they can wait until the price rises to make it worth while. And this does happen. There are peaker plants that only fire up a few times a year to pay the bills when the time is right.

 

[furcifer]

Anyway, gas peakers are probably on their way out in the next 10 years, as discussed in this newsletter from GE, who should know because they sell gas turbines:
https://www.ge.com/power/transform/article.transform.articles.2018.oct.storage-threat-to-peaker-plants

"Peakers are expensive," Kann said. "Energy storage is starting to get very close to the point where it can just beat a gas peaker, head-to-head, purely on an economic basis."

and

"I can't see a reason why we should ever build a gas peaker again in the US after, say, 2025," Shayle Kann, a senior adviser to the energy research firms GTM Research

This could be. I think it actually hinges on the Sadoway battery. Peaking is costly and you need continuous power.

It should be interesting to see all the cranks complaining about brain tumors from wind turbines freak out when they start planting down skids of batteries, messing with their Reki and whatnot

 

[Hillhater]

.......
This could be. I think it actually hinges on the Sadoway battery. Peaking is costly and you need continuous power.

Relying on any potential battery technology for utility power continuity is foolish.
You are trying to plan for an unknown situation, both capacity and duration.
Even Teslas “ Worlds biggest Battery”. (Hornsdale power reserve), supporting one of the worlds smallest utility areas ( S Australia,.2.0 GW peak) ,.. has an insignificant (literally unmeasurable),..impact on the system.
Yes, we are assured it provides “valuable “ FCAS support,..but that support was not required before RE was introduced ?
Batteries are STORAGE,..they generate NO electricity ( infact they are parasitic consumers)... what is required for a cheap, effective, utility power supply is a reliable continuous GENERATION capacity.
...and that is clearly NOT wind or solar , which only function when they have massive support from other fossil generators.

 

[furcifer]

.......
This could be. I think it actually hinges on the Sadoway battery. Peaking is costly and you need continuous power.

Relying on any potential battery technology for utility power continuity is foolish.
You are trying to plan for an unknown situation, both capacity and duration.
Even Teslas “ Worlds biggest Battery”. (Hornsdale power reserve), supporting one of the worlds smallest utility areas ( S Australia,.2.0 GW peak) ,.. has an insignificant (literally unmeasurable),..impact on the system.
Yes, we are assured it provides “valuable “ FCAS support,..but that support was not required before RE was introduced ?
Batteries are STORAGE,..they generate NO electricity ( infact they are parasitic consumers)... what is required for a cheap, effective, utility power supply is a reliable continuous GENERATION capacity.
...and that is clearly NOT wind or solar , which only function when they have massive support from other fossil generators.

Seems like they're going to shove solar and wind down our throats regardless. So prepare for batteries! I'm starting out with 52V

It Sadoway's tech pans out I think we're looking at a situation where every corner lot basically has a shipping container sized battery on it. Maybe they bury them or something. That way they will be easy to abandon when people finally resign themselves to the fact that if we want petawatts of electricity we're going to have to build nuclear plants.

 

[Hillhater]

Seems like they're going to shove solar and wind down our throats regardless. So prepare for batteries! I'm starting out with 52V

It Sadoway's tech pans out I think we're looking at a situation where every corner lot basically has a shipping container sized battery on it. Maybe they bury them or something. That way they will be easy to abandon when people finally resign themselves to the fact that if we want petawatts of electricity we're going to have to build nuclear plants.

Solar and wind will reach a “natural” limit when the issues they raise becom obvious to the majority.
Leading proponents, Germany, Spain, australia, are already experiencing technical complications and cost implications that were never forecast and once the subsidiesand incentives are wound back, the game plan will be revised.
Australia has never had a Nuclear power plant..Federal laws prevent one being built, but now, having experienced the enormous cost increases of electricity due to the conversion to even just a small % of wind and solar,..there are submissions being tabled in our Parliament to change that law to allow the future uptake of Nuclear technology for power generation.
Whilst i admire Sadoway’s efforts and sincerely hope it is successful, it will never provide the backup for a large grid system powered by wind and solar.
A container full of hot metal to supply 30 houses for a few hours.. ? Now scale that up to supply a city like N York with all its population and commercial demand, ..for a few winter days with low winds ?

 

[furcifer]

Australia has never had a Nuclear power plant..Federal laws prevent one being built,

I just found this out. Why? It's the dumbest law I've heard of, so what's the reasoning?

 

[Hillhater]

Australia has never had a Nuclear power plant..Federal laws prevent one being built,

I just found this out. Why? It's the dumbest law I've heard of, so what's the reasoning?

A number of reasons.but basicly an early “green” or anti nuclear movement in the 70’s together with the fact that Australia had discovered enormous resources of coal and natural gas which were much cheaper to use for electricity than Nuclear development.
But we got close....work started on constructing a nuclear power plant in the late 60’s, but a change of Government stopped the project,
We dont have any Nuclear weapons either
Remember Australia had been used for the British A bomb tests in the 60’s ,and have a research reactor for producing medical isotopes.