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Any large percentage of power, going offline quickly, will strain our power grid. Somewhere after 20% or so, power grids become unstable with transient renewable power. When a large plant goes offline our grid can handle it, with renewables nearly 100 plants can go offline at any time if we exceed 20% renewable our power grid will fail. It gets tougher to cover for transient output the more power is created by solar or wind.
Don't worry it will be quite a while before we get close to 20% renewables here and the engineers will keep things running. That's what we do.
Your "Sky is Falling" scenario is silly. It's much more likely that we would loses multiple nuclear plants than 100 renewable plants.
I'm interested in discussion the United States. Let's stay on the subject. What's happening in Spain, Russia, Outer Mongolia, etc is really irrelevant.
Any large percentage of power, going offline quickly, will strain our power grid. Somewhere after 20% or so, power grids become unstable with transient renewable power. When a large plant goes offline our grid can handle it, with renewables nearly 100 plants can go offline at any time if we exceed 20% renewable our power grid will fail. It gets tougher to cover for transient output the more power is created by solar or wind.
Strain the grid: yes. We are seeing more than 20% swings in net load in California, both downwards as solar starts generating, and upwards when solar stops generating. We're also well over 20% renewable--estimated around 27% right now. http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/.../renewable.pdf
But we are blessed with resources and many parts of the State have a mild climate, reducing energy demands.
Your "Sky is Falling" scenario is silly. It's much more likely that we would loses multiple nuclear plants than 100 renewable plants.
We lose solar plants every single calendar day. In fact, we lose all of our solar plants every single calendar day. Preliminary studies suggest that a phenomenon known as "night" is responsible.
Wind lose wind farms all the time, thanks to periods of calm wind.
As soon as wind and solar become a significant portion of our generation, their intermittency will become a significant problem. Look at Germany for a real-world example. Look at the "duck curve" problem in California.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DCforever
I'm interested in discussion the United States. Let's stay on the subject. What's happening in Spain, Russia, Outer Mongolia, etc is really irrelevant.
Russia and Outer Mongolia are probably irrelevant, since those areas have not tried adding large amounts of wind and solar to their grids.
Places like Denmark, Germany, and Spain ARE quite relevant, since those countries have added large amounts of wind and/or solar to their grids. Their real-world results are not encouraging.
There is some wisdom for you to try to absorb. "The wind doesn't blow all the time, but the wind blows all the time somewhere." Large geographically dispersed wind resources do not lose power. The power level fluctuates some. Losing solar at night is generally not a problem, the load goes down at night. You seem terribly concerned about the "duck curve" but the grid dispatchers have been dealing with it since the very beginning. They just run some cheap simple cycle gas turbines for a couple of hours. The lights don't go out due to sunset anywhere in this country.
Lights also stay on in Europe. The sky doesn't fall Chicken Little.
There is some wisdom for you to try to absorb. "The wind doesn't blow all the time, but the wind blows all the time somewhere." Large geographically dispersed wind resources do not lose power. The power level fluctuates some. Losing solar at night is generally not a problem, the load goes down at night. You seem terribly concerned about the "duck curve" but the grid dispatchers have been dealing with it since the very beginning. They just run some cheap simple cycle gas turbines for a couple of hours. The lights don't go out due to sunset anywhere in this country.
Lights also stay on in Europe. The sky doesn't fall Chicken Little.
You're attacking a straw man. No one is suggesting that it is impossible to add a large amount of solar and wind to the grid. I am suggesting that it is not economical.
Show me a nation that gets >30% of its annual electricity from wind and/or solar that also has average electricity costs below 18 cents/kWh (USD).
The average price for US electricity is 12 cents/kWh. 18 cents would be a 50% increase from the average. I'm assuming that the average American would tolerate a 50% increase in their electric bill before they revolt.
You're attacking a straw man. No one is suggesting that it is impossible to add a large amount of solar and wind to the grid. I am suggesting that it is not economical.
Show me a nation that gets >30% of its annual electricity from wind and/or solar that also has average electricity costs below 18 cents/kWh (USD).
The average price for US electricity is 12 cents/kWh. 18 cents would be a 50% increase from the average. I'm assuming that the average American would tolerate a 50% increase in their electric bill before they revolt.
We will deal with "a large amount of solar and wind on the grid" somewhere down the road. PV has already dropped to less than $1/W at the panel. As it keeps dropping all sorts of alternatives present themselves. Wind energy is already within the band of wholesale grid power in many locations. Those prices will continue to decline.
One of the more obvious solutions to the fluctuation in production by pv is just local controllable load. Smart technology is penetrating the house. A very simple solution to fluctuating supply is to mirror that with the load. It's really easy to cycle air conditioning, refrigeration and other large loads to reduce load when a cloud crosses the pv array. Until then we can easily match loads and resources when renewables are unavailable using simple cycle gas turbines.
Americans already pay 20-30 ¢/kWh in several locations and I haven't seen a revolt. Your understanding of utility economic and the future price of renewables is really weak.
We will deal with "a large amount of solar and wind on the grid" somewhere down the road. PV has already dropped to less than $1/W at the panel. As it keeps dropping all sorts of alternatives present themselves. Wind energy is already within the band of wholesale grid power in many locations. Those prices will continue to decline.
One of the more obvious solutions to the fluctuation in production by pv is just local controllable load. Smart technology is penetrating the house. A very simple solution to fluctuating supply is to mirror that with the load. It's really easy to cycle air conditioning, refrigeration and other large loads to reduce load when a cloud crosses the pv array. Until then we can easily match loads and resources when renewables are unavailable using simple cycle gas turbines.
Americans already pay 20-30 ¢/kWh in several locations and I haven't seen a revolt. Your understanding of utility economic and the future price of renewables is really weak.
So you cannot give an example. That's what I thought.
20-30c/kWh is the exception in the US, not the rule.
Any large percentage of power, going offline quickly, will strain our power grid. Somewhere after 20% or so, power grids become unstable with transient renewable power.
Someone I know who works in the local power utility told me some funny stories about what they do when a cloud goes over Maui and all the PV systems put out far less power, yet there is still this huge load that cannot be met quickly enough by the generators. Basically, PV can shut down faster than generators can ramp up. The utility has had to call the large county and state buildings and have them turn off all their A/C to lessen the load until the generators can crank up.
Grid level storage is really needed. Hawaii is rolling out some but a lot more is needed.
So you cannot give an example. That's what I thought.
20-30c/kWh is the exception in the US, not the rule.
Example of what?
20-30 ¢/kWh is the rule if you live in one of these high cost areas. Again your prognostication is unsupported by factual experience. Further, there is no evidence that renewables drive up the cost of retail electricity. New wind projects are signing power agreements in the 2-4 ¢/kWh range.
Last edited by DCforever; 02-17-2017 at 07:14 AM..
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