Load-following and intermittency | 37 comments (37 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

European Tribune - Load-following and intermittency

It would be good if readers could find details on that; and also on possible load-following operation in Sweden or Spain.

Not easy to find. The common wisdom is that nuclear power (65-70 TWh) is base load and hydro (50-75 TWh) is both base and top load. The only solid thing I found was a report from Vattenfall on something else that mentioned reactors running at reduced load in the summer. It was just a sentence and could possibly referred to scheduled maintenance in the summer.

Sweden has a lot of hydro and I would see little need for using nuclear as intermedient power here. Especially as I agree that starting them puts them at risk.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Feb 9th, 2010 at 11:12:11 AM EST

Related (4.00 / 3)

Searching for more info I found an related article from early January. Apparently Sweden has an extra set of mothballed plants for really cold winters with low water levels and offline nuclear. Here is some experts:

Elpaniken tvingar fram dyr oljekraft - Ny Teknik		Electricity panic forces expensive oil power
Den statliga myndigheten Svenska Kraftnät har nu aktiverat all den reservkraft på 1 300 MW som energibolagen mot betalning håller i beredskap om det blir en så kallad tioårsvinter då den vanliga elproduktionen inte räcker.		The governmental authority Swedish National Grid has now enabled all of the back up of 1 300 MW that energy companies - against payment - has on standby if there is a so-called tenth winter when the normal electricity generation is not enough.
Svenska Kraftnäts generaldirektör Mikael Odenberg tvingades i går också ringa till Vattenfall och stoppat planerna på att lägga oljekraftverken i Stenungsund i malpåse.		Swedish Kraftnäts General Mikael Odenberg was forced to call Vattenfall and halt plans to have oil plants in Stenungsund mothballed.
Var på väg att läggas ned Så sent som i början av december meddelade det statliga energibolaget Vattenfall att man lägger ned de oljeeldade reservkraftverken i Stenungsund och Marviken.		Was about to be closed As late as early December the state energy company Vattenfall announced that the oil-fired back-up power plants in Stenungsund and Marviken would be closed.
Under stora delar av hösten 2009 var bara hälften av den svenska kärnkraftskapaciteten igång.		During much of the autumn of 2009 was only half of the Swedish nuclear power capacity up and running.
Och nu, när den arktiska kylan dragit ned över Sverige, har Vattenfall, Eon och Fortum ännu inte fått ordning på sina kärnkraftverk. Fortfarande är drygt en fjärdedel av kapaciteten ur drift.		And now, when the Arctic cold drawn down over Sweden, Vattenfall, Eon and Fortum have not yet sorted out their nuclear power plants. Still more than one quarter of the capacity out of service.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Feb 9th, 2010 at 04:10:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Related (4.00 / 2)

Meanwhile, I just got a French study emailed. The initial summary proclaims the technical feasibility and business impossibility of load-following operation.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Feb 9th, 2010 at 04:30:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Related (4.00 / 2)

A funny detail is that one of these oil-fired reserve units is the one at Marviken, which was originally built as a revolutionary (and flawed) nuclear power plant, the last gasp of the Swedish nuclear dual-use program. It was converted to oil later, having never run in the nuclear configuration.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Fri Feb 12th, 2010 at 01:33:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Sweden (4.00 / 3)

The lower summer load should be because of refueling outages (always done in summer), not load following.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Fri Feb 12th, 2010 at 01:31:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Are the fuel outages always done in summer ... (4.00 / 2)

... as a form of seasonal intermediate load following?

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Fri Feb 12th, 2010 at 01:50:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Are the fuel outages always done in summer ... (4.00 / 2)

Yes. Demand is always at the lowest in the middle of summer, when no heating is needed. We also have a number of big (big!) hydro reservoires in the far north which are used for multi-year load following.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Fri Feb 12th, 2010 at 02:19:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Same in France (4.00 / 2)

maintenance is done in the summer, when demand is usually significantly lower than in winter.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sat Feb 13th, 2010 at 05:57:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Same in France (4.00 / 3)

In much of the US, the strongest electric peak is in summer, from AC - winter is more a peak for natural gas and heating oil demand.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sat Feb 13th, 2010 at 04:13:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Same in France (4.00 / 2)

The differences are very interesting. One might add that in Sweden there is almost no use of natural gas at all, and the little that exists is used to fuel one CHP plant and some petrochemical factories.

They do import gas into France but I'm not sure what they use it for. Cooking?

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sat Feb 13th, 2010 at 04:55:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Same in France (4.00 / 2)

Half the use is residential, one third industrial. Methinks most of the residential is for heating, even if electric heating has a market share of 60%.

I note that according to this, due to the necessity to use fossil fuel plants to supply the seasonal heating peak, even according to EdF's own calculations, CO2 emissions from electric heating are barely below that from gas: 180 vs. 195 g/kWh.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Sun Feb 14th, 2010 at 05:21:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Aha, I think that the only parts of the ... (none / 1)

... US where electric heating would have anywhere near 60% market share by site would be regions with relatively mild winters and involve quite a substantial amount of reverse cycle air-conditioning in that share.

So the stronger summer than winter electric peak has distinct causes in different parts of the US, where in cold parts of the US such as Northeast Ohio, the strong summer peak is because of limited market share for electric heat and while in hotter parts of the US the strong summer peak is in part because cooling is such a large overall energy demand relative to heating even with high shares of electric heating.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon Feb 15th, 2010 at 05:29:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Aha, I think that the only parts of the ... (none / 0)

On top of that, power is pretty expensive in the US, even in supposedly cheap places like Texas. Let's not even talk about California...

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Feb 16th, 2010 at 03:36:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

That's one reason why ... (none / 0)

... many of the electric thermal heating systems of the 60's and 70's ended up being replaced, particularly after the deregulation of natural gas prices, except in places where the actual winter heating task is not especially severe either in terms of average minimum temperature or duration of cold weather.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Feb 16th, 2010 at 04:26:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Load-following and intermittency | 37 comments (37 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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