Use pumped storage systems to store solar genetarted electricity.

[chad thomas]

I agree there is no pleasing those idiots. And yet most all of them tree huggers live in wooden homes and drive petro-fuel burning cars. Those people are usualy the most clueless.

[kevarc]

They were clueless back in the late 70's also.

I was in college when the UMWA went out on strike. I was a member back then as that was where I worked in th summer and during holidays to pay for college. The nutters were going to have a rally in support of the striking miners. Another guy and I were having some liquid refreshments and after a few we decided since we were union folks we would go. We never laughed so hard. These folks did not have a clue. Jeez, they still had us mining with pick and shovel. When we told what is was really like in the mines they really didn't want to believe us. They couldn't understand that if we thought we needed a repirator, all we had to do was ask for one and they would give it to us. They also thought that we made 4 bucks/hour. When we told them, that as general inside laborers we were almost making 10/ hour they definately thought we were not being quite truthfull. Thankfully we had a union cards with us. We offered to go get a copy of the bargaining agreement to prove that we made what we did.

[chad thomas]

kevarc,
Could you tell me how the load is regulated at a baseload plant. I mean like when the load is less than the supply.

[kevarc]

You shouldn't load controlwith a baseload plant. Coal fired plants are a total pain to ramp up and down, nucs are a bit easier.

Coal fired plant you would reduce the coal sent to the firebox, or choke back the steam going to the turbine. With a nuc you would insert the control rods to limit the reaction.

But you really do not want to, baseload plants are the cheapest to operate, so you want to run them as much as possible. For our plant we run it as high as we can and use one of our gas fired boilers to load control, they are a lot easier to ramp up and down to follow the load. Gas turbines are the easiest to follow load with and with the newer ones, they have a great heat rates. Heat rate is the total amount of heat input into a steam generator, divided by the net output of the plant in terms of kilowatts. The lower the number the better the plant. You can take that number and reference that againt the price of the fuel. That will give you a better idea on what you want. The high NG prices lately have put a real hurt on those with NG fired turbines. High furl costs can negate the better heat rate. If we still had 2.50-3.00$/mmbtu gas, they are cost comparitive with other units.

[chad thomas]

Interesting. I figured there was some controll downstream from the actual generator for controll. So what happens if all of the sudden a large portion of your load drops out, like a blown transformer ( I realize this is probably not that common).

[kevarc]

Well, remember New York? That is a drastic case but it does happen. But the load will flow and their are safegrauds that are built into the system and should be used, not bypassed. If we shed load all of a sudden, we just give free juice to the grid until we ramp the unit(s) down.

Nope it is all done at the plant - the plant people do not control this, most of the time, the control center for the company/control area/region are the ones that actually control the unit. For us, our control center is her in Lafayette, LA. The units we use for load control are either in Houma, Plaquemine, or Morgan City , LA. We generelly only have one running. Now if we need to ramp the unit up, the operator in the control center here in Lafayette send a signal to the unit to increase output. The operator at the plant does not do it, unless communication is lost between the control room computer and the unit controls.

[tree68]

QUOTE: Originally posted by chad thomas

Interesting. I figured there was some control downstream from the actual generator for control. So what happens if all of the sudden a large portion of your load drops out, like a blown transformer ( I realize this is probably not that common).

Do some research on the causes of the last big northeast blackout. Should answer your question.

Your garden variety pole mounted transformer blowing is only a blip on the big scheme of things. Everybody arriving home from work and firing up the AC at about the same time is a bigger issue.

[kevarc]

"Your garden variety pole mounted transformer blowing is only a blip on the big scheme of things. Everybody arriving home from work and firing up the AC at about the same time is a bigger issue."

Not really. Now, if you cascade the tranformer failures AND have the entire town turn on their AC, then you may have a problem. A good system op knows the load characteristics and is able to ramp a unit up or down and stay with the load curve.

You can always tell if we get afternoon rain here in the summer. The load drops rather quickly, the ops need to be on their toes..