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The fundamental flaw with wind power. Prosperous economies require reliable energy when needed, so power generation must be dispatchable on demand. Interm

The fundamental flaw with wind power. Prosperous economies require reliable energy when needed, so power generation must be dispatchable on demand. Intermittent wind and solar source generators can temporarily supply low-cost electric power to the grid, but with a capacity factor of about 30%. This has created demand for redundant natural gas turbine generators to provide “back up” power when there is no wind or sun. The wind does not blow on demand and, currently in the Pacific Northwest, they store the wind energy in batteries! The neighboring hydroelectric dams can back up water when demand is low (e.g. at night) and increase flow when demand rises (e.g. during the day).

powcontech 5y ago
While dams certainly store energy I wonder how many actually have flexibility to change their output by 80% of rated capacity or more on the same timescales that wind and solar output can vary. I imagine there are a lot of environmental restrictions to keep the river flowing, avoid dewatering habitat for fish and otherwise impacting the ecosystem, and also supplying water to downstream users like farms and cities. Can’t stop the river completely!
- hedora 5y ago
  As I understand it, some hydro plants have a second, smaller reservoir downhill from the dam. It absorbs water from surge production, and even allows the water to be pumped back uphill.
- noselasd 5y ago
  you can switch turbines on and off , leading water to a turbine or a bypass in minutes
  - powcontech 5y ago
    You can, but I wonder do the operating conditions of the river actually allow it for a great number of plants? Or are they hemmed in by needing to always have a certain flow in the river plus/minus 10%.
    - noselasd 5y ago
      Usually they require a certain flow, the flow will be the same whether it goes through a turbine or bypass ofc.
cinntaile 5y ago
Did you comment in the wrong thread? This has nothing to do with wind power, ThorCon uses a molten salt fission reactor.
- waynecochran 5y ago
  My quote was directly from the article.
spockz 5y ago
With a sufficiently high base load provided by renewables the short demand spikes can be served with plants with quicker reaction times like gas plants. With sufficiently high install base of wind and solar power the base can be high enough and the excess stored or things like aluminium plants retooled to use excess energy.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  So poor countries must massively over-invest in renewables and when renewables are high they have absurdly to much energy they can't do anything with leading to negative prices. And then the need to build storage to capture some of that energy and also peaker plants to cover that. Given those countries are barley able to but up coal plants right now, and are massively lacking in the power infrastructure to wildly distribute wind/solar power that seems like an incredibly hard plan. If you can just get 1 working nuclear reactor design (even if its an old PWR) to the point where you can build and run it. Over then next 10-30 years you can just build them as fast as you can next to every large city and provide reliable power. > aluminium plants retooled to use excess energy. The problem with that is that if you are an aluminium plant you want to run at high utility. You don't want to continuously! Not turn it on and off 3 times a day. Those kinds of installations are hard enough to run with reliable power.
  - spockz 5y ago
    Why focus on poor countries? Exactly for the reasons you mention I see only developed countries do this. For the aluminium processing type plants issue, it appears steel plants and other heavy industry here in the Netherlands are investing in their own power/heat storage capabilities. Exactly so that they can operate on their own terms instead of the net having to develop a generic power storing solution.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      Because no amount of changing the power mix in Europe will prevent climate change. Indonesia is gigantic has a huge population and will have a massive amount energy needs. If not nuclear this will be coal. And those plants have 50 year lifetime at least. The reality is that climate change will be decided in India, Indonesia and China more then anywhere else. If they can actually adopt nuclear and be a pro nuclear society they have the potential to have game changing impact. Indonesia in particular has gigantic amount of people living at the cost. So an approach where you do centralized building and then ship the plants to the population makes a lot of sense. And Indonesia by itself is big enough that its actually worth building such a model. They will need 100s of GWs of reactors if they want to reach Western standards of power consumption. > investing in their own power/heat storage capabilities Yes and that costs a lot of money. Europe is also in a Europe wide power net with lots of nuclear, coal and renewables. Doing that in such a system is much more doable then in Indonesia.

powcontech 5y ago

While dams certainly store energy I wonder how many actually have flexibility to change their output by 80% of rated capacity or more on the same timescales that wind and solar output can vary. I imagine there are a lot of environmental restrictions to keep the river flowing, avoid dewatering habitat for fish and otherwise impacting the ecosystem, and also supplying water to downstream users like farms and cities. Can’t stop the river completely!

hedora 5y ago
As I understand it, some hydro plants have a second, smaller reservoir downhill from the dam. It absorbs water from surge production, and even allows the water to be pumped back uphill.
noselasd 5y ago
you can switch turbines on and off , leading water to a turbine or a bypass in minutes
- powcontech 5y ago
  You can, but I wonder do the operating conditions of the river actually allow it for a great number of plants? Or are they hemmed in by needing to always have a certain flow in the river plus/minus 10%.
  - noselasd 5y ago
    Usually they require a certain flow, the flow will be the same whether it goes through a turbine or bypass ofc.

cinntaile 5y ago

Did you comment in the wrong thread? This has nothing to do with wind power, ThorCon uses a molten salt fission reactor.

waynecochran 5y ago
My quote was directly from the article.

spockz 5y ago

With a sufficiently high base load provided by renewables the short demand spikes can be served with plants with quicker reaction times like gas plants. With sufficiently high install base of wind and solar power the base can be high enough and the excess stored or things like aluminium plants retooled to use excess energy.

panick21_ 5y ago
So poor countries must massively over-invest in renewables and when renewables are high they have absurdly to much energy they can't do anything with leading to negative prices. And then the need to build storage to capture some of that energy and also peaker plants to cover that. Given those countries are barley able to but up coal plants right now, and are massively lacking in the power infrastructure to wildly distribute wind/solar power that seems like an incredibly hard plan. If you can just get 1 working nuclear reactor design (even if its an old PWR) to the point where you can build and run it. Over then next 10-30 years you can just build them as fast as you can next to every large city and provide reliable power. > aluminium plants retooled to use excess energy. The problem with that is that if you are an aluminium plant you want to run at high utility. You don't want to continuously! Not turn it on and off 3 times a day. Those kinds of installations are hard enough to run with reliable power.
- spockz 5y ago
  Why focus on poor countries? Exactly for the reasons you mention I see only developed countries do this. For the aluminium processing type plants issue, it appears steel plants and other heavy industry here in the Netherlands are investing in their own power/heat storage capabilities. Exactly so that they can operate on their own terms instead of the net having to develop a generic power storing solution.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    Because no amount of changing the power mix in Europe will prevent climate change. Indonesia is gigantic has a huge population and will have a massive amount energy needs. If not nuclear this will be coal. And those plants have 50 year lifetime at least. The reality is that climate change will be decided in India, Indonesia and China more then anywhere else. If they can actually adopt nuclear and be a pro nuclear society they have the potential to have game changing impact. Indonesia in particular has gigantic amount of people living at the cost. So an approach where you do centralized building and then ship the plants to the population makes a lot of sense. And Indonesia by itself is big enough that its actually worth building such a model. They will need 100s of GWs of reactors if they want to reach Western standards of power consumption. > investing in their own power/heat storage capabilities Yes and that costs a lot of money. Europe is also in a Europe wide power net with lots of nuclear, coal and renewables. Doing that in such a system is much more doable then in Indonesia.