Friday Open Thread | 55 comments (55 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Friday Open Thread (none / 0)

OK, so less than a thousand come to the Mayor's party, the post wasn't written within engineering safety tolerance.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 03:06:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Friday Open Thread (none / 1)

I was just going to say that I hope there are at least a few engineers invited in order to keep the marketing and financial wizards at bay. Reality and all that...

by asdf on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 03:27:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Friday Open Thread (none / 0)

Lots of engineers there, and lots of engineering discussion.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 03:36:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Friday Open Thread (none / 0)

The question I would ask, if I were there, would be about the short term stability of the grid in the presence of high penetration of wind generation. Is the required technology available, and is it accounted for in the cost model?

by asdf on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 04:11:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]

SGEM (4.00 / 2)

Developing smart grids and energy markets

A short pdf on one of the programs being run by the CLEEN consortium (companies, academia, research institutions, cooperating using Finnish state funding channeled through Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation).

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 04:27:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Friday Open Thread (none / 1)

Some engineers might ask what have you been smoking?

Short term stability of the gird does not compute with high penetration of wind. The short term stability of the grid is fine, especially in amurka where wind is 2%. High penetration of wind, you mean like in north germany or higher in Denmark, where we're well over 20%, and the grid still functions?

What we've learned is... utility engineers like to have something to do. In spite of them doing something, electron force still flows.

At current levels, and projected into the mid-term, there are zero effects on the grid which can't be managed cost-effectively.

What required technology?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 04:31:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Grid stability (4.00 / 3)

Grid stability is brought to you by having reserve capacity available to adapt offer (mainly) to demand at all times. It can adapt to variable offer as well.

Reserve capacity is something that needs to be managed on a system-wide basis, not on a plant by plant basis, otherwise it becomes horribly expensive - for all types of producers. This is the core mistake anti-wind opponents do about the cost of intermittency of wind - what matters is not the absolute intermittency of wind, but the additional cost it imposes on the system (which already has to deal with large intra-day variability and with possible incidents at very large plants like nukes). Practice tells us that this additional cost has consistently been overestimated.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 04:34:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (4.00 / 2)

In my wannabe writerly way what i tried to say was

"Practice tells us that this additional cost has consistently been overestimated. "

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 04:53:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (4.00 / 2)

One question is about the long term considerations of wind patterns, etc. What I'm asking about is the short term variability that can lead to voltage oscillations in the grid, like this:

In large wind farms connected to the transmission network the main technical constraint to take into account is the power system transient stability that could be lost when, for example, a voltage dip causes the switch off of a large number of WGs.
A system experiences a state of voltage instability when there is a progressive or uncontrollable drop in voltage magnitude after a disturbance, increase in load demand or change in operating condition. The main factor, which causes these unacceptable voltage profiles, is the inability of the distribution system to meet the demand for reactive power. Under normal operating conditions, the bus voltage magnitude (V) increases as Q injected at the same bus is increased. However, when V of any one of the system's buses decreases with the increase in Q for that same bus, the system is said to be unstable. Although the voltage instability is a localised problem, its impact on the system can be wide spread...

Voltage Stability Investigation of Grid Connected Wind Farm
Trinh Trong Chuong

According to my limited understanding of the subject, to successfully integrate a large fraction of wind generators into your grid you need to have pretty sophisticated real-time monitoring of the voltage and current phases throughout the grid, and a system that tells you what to do when you have a troublesome transient condition, and then the appropriate resources (reactive power sources, for example) appropriately distributed within the system.

I don't know much about this, but my impression is that there is a lot of electrical engineering work going on in the background that is not immediately apparent. And my fundamental worry is that while "we" are all working vigorously for additional sustainable resources in the overall supply system, some of the hard technical problems have not actually been solved yet...

Maybe I'm full of it, which is why I would ask such questions at an appropriate conference...

by asdf on Fri Sep 14th, 2012 at 07:03:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (none / 0)

As far as I understand, modern wind turbines have reactive power and the ability to stabilise voltage.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sat Sep 15th, 2012 at 04:00:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (none / 0)

No power engineer, so can't adequately address most issues, except:

Capacitor banks have often been added to grid interconnection points for reactive power.
european grid engineers and their bosses fought against wind for decades, even into this century, based upon such technical issues. Most issues never arose, and the ones which did have been solved. Turbines in most markets are now required to have certified low-voltage ride through capability (LVRT).
Currently, utility engineers are very supportive of wind's addition to the grid. Decentralized generation has positive aspects as well.
I've never seen any technical problems which haven't also had a solution over time.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Sat Sep 15th, 2012 at 04:06:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (none / 1)

"I've never seen any technical problems which haven't also had a solution over time."

This is exactly my question. If the integration timeline is, say, 20 years to get to, say, 50% of solar PV and wind supply, then that is one set of requirements to the power engineers. If the integration timeline is, say, 5 years, that is a significantly different--and potentially much more expensive--set of requirements...

by asdf on Sat Sep 15th, 2012 at 11:02:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (none / 0)

Should have said i've never seen a problem which hasn't been solved within just a few years. And that's over four decades.

More expensive? By what corrupt metrics?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Sat Sep 15th, 2012 at 01:21:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (none / 0)

Ok, take it easy, I'm just asking. The point is that if there are difficult technical problems to be overcome in order to integrate sustainable supplies, and if the expected timeline is 20 years, that is one development scenario. If the timeline is 5 years, that is a different development scenario. It sort of sounds like you know that there are no such problems and that everything is ok. Which is great. But if I were at such a conference, I would ask. That's all.

by asdf on Sat Sep 15th, 2012 at 07:15:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Grid stability (none / 0)

This has been studied:

http://www.ieawind.org/task_25.html

It seems that the stability of the grid does not become a problem at any penetration, i.e., solutions exist and are very affordable.

Another issue is that very high penetrations require improvements in transmission to reap the aggregation benefits. I.e., building long HVDC interconnects. There, concerns similar to yours may have a bit more validity. Somebody just has to start building the damn things ;-)

by mustakissa on Wed Sep 19th, 2012 at 06:02:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Friday Open Thread | 55 comments (55 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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