3 ms·
Thanks for the link, it nicely explains what I tried to summarize in my posts about the misconceptions of base load. May be it should be added that of course r
by _ph_ 5y ago
Thanks for the link, it nicely explains what I tried to summarize in my posts about the misconceptions of base load.
May be it should be added that of course renewables can be dispatchable if not all of their available capacity is used all the time. The typical gas peaker plans are idle 90% of the time. But people complain less about that, as gas plans consume gas to run, while e.g. solar cells don't have any additional costs for producing electricity vs. not producing electricity. So it seems like a waste to not operate them at full capacity. Yet, the situation isn't that different from a gas plant idling most of the time.
Annectodal, the French grid is mostly nuclear and they of course face the problems with running a varying grid load with "base load" power plants. The solution is, to run their nuclear power plants at an average of 75% of their full power, this gives them more ability to regulate the output, but of course it means, that the cost per energy produced raises, as they usually are not fully utilized.
Which probably is the reason, why France is exporting a lot of electricity - with the European grid it is cheaper to have a varying export than a variable production.
- cycomanic 5y agoI think we will see much more integration across the European electricity grid in the near future, which makes production fluctuations less and less relevant (they just average out over a large grid). I didn't know how many impediments still existed for an integrated european grid. I only found out when reading up on things today, that Scandinavia operates on a different frequency to mainland Europe, which has been an obstacle for Norway to sell their surplus to the rest of Europe (they are now building a connection to Germany and are bridging the operating frequency so that should be better in the future). Here is an interesting article about this: https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-europes-biggest-power-exporter/ https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-...
- _ph_ 5y agoThe first DC connection between Germany and Norway has been put into operations some months ago. Which also solves all frequency problems :). If you look on www.electricitymap.org, you can see how much electricity is already shifted around in Europe. Like with car traffic, Germany is a country which distributes electricity across Europe. Especially France often exports to many European countries, a lot through Germany. (Which creates an inflated impression about how much French electrictiy is exported to Germany, because it is often overlooked that at the same time Germany exports the same amount or even more to neighboring countries).
- bluGill 5y agoFrequency doesn't matter because at a large scale you can't match AC frequencies anyway so you go to DC for transmissions. There are other advantages to high voltage DC over AC as well that I don't remember.
- Symbiote 5y agoWhat is a large scale? The Continental European grid covers 400 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoYou will not have operational grid scalw storage for a days worth of output any time soon, the only way to compensate for intermittency of renewable is to have massive overcapacity - we will havw a grid where peice can change sharply, and sometime be deeply negative. That can still be fine as the cost of renewables keeps falling, but complainig about capacity factor of nuclear in this context is laughable
- _ph_ 5y agoWe don't need grid scale of storage for a days worth of output any time soon. And I have not complained about the capacity factor of nuclear, I just have described what France has to do to be able to run a grid with varying loads with nuclear power.