5 ms·

The whole concept of "base load" is wrong. Electric networks need to provide exactly as much power as demmanded at any point in time to remain stable. "Base loa

by _ph_ 4y ago

The whole concept of "base load" is wrong. Electric networks need to provide exactly as much power as demmanded at any point in time to remain stable. "Base load" was just a statistical construct to determine which fraction of the total load is constant and can consequently served by slow power plants. Like nuclear and coal. To maintain a stable grid, you always needed quick power plants like gas and water. Yes, solar and wind will need to be accompanied by lets call them "on-demand" power sources, like gas, water, in the future large-scale storage and of course power2gas for entirely renewal gas production. By the way, the "base load" was artificially increased in the past to accommodate the mainly slow power plants. This is no longer a requirement, future loads will be more dynamic and more adjusted to the market offers.

Tyrek 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand your point. Time is just a statistical construct, but it's also a useful one. Similarly, base load is a concept to determine how power generation should be distributed between high reliability/consistent sources, vs less consistent sources.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  > Time is just a statistical construct This is an incredible misunderstanding! Honestly, it's like saying that planet Earth is flat. Did you meant something like "time zones are a social construct"? This true but quite a different claim that the one you made (which is not surprising since what you said is just nonsense).
- _ph_ 4y ago
  The thing is, if the demand of the grid raises, you have to raise power production. Period. Of course, if e.g. it is dark, you cannot raise the power production of solar cells. That is bad. But if your nuclear plant is running at 100% already, you cannot rise the power production either. So it doesn't help you. "Base load" is only the statistical number of load you can expect 24/7 for your planning. So you always have to have some means of power generation available for demand raises at any point and you have to be able to throttle down power generation in case of a demand drop, because otherwise the grid goes down equally as if you had not enough power capacity. The good news is: renewables can be throttled down quickly, better than most other sources, the bad news is, you can only know about 3 days in advance what the maximum output of your renewables will be and there are days with very low total production. A future grid concept would have to come up with a solution for that. Gas would have been the easy way and probably will be the future when based on gas created via power2gas.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    Pumped hydro and batteries solve this variability very well.
    - nathanaldensr 4y ago
      At grid scale?
      - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        yes. they don't do a good job of dealing with seasonal variability, but batteries are great at dealing with milliseconds to hours, and pumped hydro is great on scales from minutes to weeks
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
rand0mx1 4y ago
Do you have ever tried to visit your local thermal power plant?? They have backup generators which run on diesel to fulfill peak load demands.
atemerev 4y ago
Burning gas emits a lot of CO2. Nuclear power emits zero CO2. Solar and wind power do not work at night (and in overcast conditions). Weather prediction horizon is 2 week tops. Grid-scale energy storage is way too expensive. Conclusion: we need nuclear (and most certainly we don’t need gas).
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Solar doesn't work at night of course, but wind power does. Actually, on average, it is stronger at night. Yes, we have to supply power in the times of low renewable production. Though there are renewables which are good for it like biomass and water. Nuclear is the worst to accompany renewables, because it is the slowest power source from a load switching perspective. Gas is the one which is fast switching, that is why the typical peaker plants run on gas. They could run on oil of course, but that would be much worse. In the future, the gas is to be produced renewable, and of course energy storate has to be extended.
  - atemerev 4y ago
    It’s not about “producing renewable”, it is about CO2 emissions (and about not empowering certain gas-exporting countries).
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      Right, but the renewables are the one power source which is well suited going into the future. They don't use up any non-renewable source (hence the name), and they are the one energy production which is really available in most countries. All the others more or less depend on imports.
- xorcist 4y ago
  Nuclear can not follow load fluctuations, so nuclear needs gas (or hydro). And before the inevitable comment follows, yes, that may change with future technology. Just like everything else.
  - 4y ago
throwaway4aday 4y ago
This is a confusing statement. Are you saying that there is no reasonable minimum amount of electricity that needs to be available all of the time? That would make no sense given that we never have situations where there is zero usage of electricity. In your scenario where we use renewables + gas, water, and storage which of these would be ensuring that we at least have enough to satisfy the loads on the grid that never turn off or vary? Everything on that list except gas is subject to forces we cannot directly control so I assume you would need a certain number of gas power plants to always be in production or idling to satisfy that demand. Thirdly, why the preference for gas over nuclear?
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Well, as statistics clearly show, there is a minimum demand 24/7. But that is just one characteristic number. That is the demand you always have to provide through the year. But at any time, more power is required, you have to provide that too. You cannot treat power demand over the "base load" any differently than the base load. Which type of energy production you might be using, you need to plan the ability to ramp up the production. So it isn't that you require special sources for the "base load", that can be provided by solar+wind, if they are available in the necessary amount. It is just that "base load" can also be provided by slow power plants. The big problem with nuclear from the grid side is, that they are the slowest power plants available. Consequently, (and because of cost efficiency) they are run at high power output levels 24/7, the rest of the grid has to adjust by being throttled or fast plants which can be ramped up and down. Gas is the fastest type of classical power plants (together with water, but that usually has limited amounts). And as the fuel always was on the expensive side, there is quite an incentive of not running gas power plants too much. They would be a good company to renewables, as they can switch between 0 and 100% and back very quickly. And in a grid dominated by renewables, you would only rarely run them at high loads for longer times. And while they emit more CO2 than nuclear plants, they do distinctively less than coal powered plans. In the long run, you can run gas plants on e.g. hydrogen produced from solar - the recent plans for extending gas power plants in Germany all included the requirement to be usable with hydrogen too.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  > The baseload[1] (also base load) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week. This demand can be met by unvarying power plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which approach has the best mix of low cost, availability and high reliability in any particular market. > [...] > According to National Grid plc chief executive officer Steve Holliday and others, baseload is "outdated".[7][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
thrown_22 4y ago
>Electric networks need to provide exactly as much power as demmanded at any point in time to remain stable. Great, so what do we do when the sun isn't shining, the wind isn't blowing and the dams are empty? Just have a second grid worth of gas plants which we turn on once every two weeks for shits and giggles?
- _ph_ 4y ago
  The same what I am doing when all the nuclear power plants are down. In fact this isn't going to happen and there needs to be enough fungible capacity both internally and in the European grid. Right now, France is highly dependent on the grid, as 50% of the nuclear plants are down.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > a second grid worth of gas plants which we turn on once every two weeks What if it just requires keeping the existing plants around, and turning them on for 6 hours every 8 weeks, for example? Yes, that's not 100% renewable, but it gets electricity production to 99% renewable, and that other 1% you can mitigate by doing power-to-gas / direct-air-capture.

by _ph_ 4y ago

Tyrek 4y ago

I'm not sure I understand your point. Time is just a statistical construct, but it's also a useful one. Similarly, base load is a concept to determine how power generation should be distributed between high reliability/consistent sources, vs less consistent sources.

SiempreViernes 4y ago
> Time is just a statistical construct This is an incredible misunderstanding! Honestly, it's like saying that planet Earth is flat. Did you meant something like "time zones are a social construct"? This true but quite a different claim that the one you made (which is not surprising since what you said is just nonsense).
_ph_ 4y ago
The thing is, if the demand of the grid raises, you have to raise power production. Period. Of course, if e.g. it is dark, you cannot raise the power production of solar cells. That is bad. But if your nuclear plant is running at 100% already, you cannot rise the power production either. So it doesn't help you. "Base load" is only the statistical number of load you can expect 24/7 for your planning. So you always have to have some means of power generation available for demand raises at any point and you have to be able to throttle down power generation in case of a demand drop, because otherwise the grid goes down equally as if you had not enough power capacity. The good news is: renewables can be throttled down quickly, better than most other sources, the bad news is, you can only know about 3 days in advance what the maximum output of your renewables will be and there are days with very low total production. A future grid concept would have to come up with a solution for that. Gas would have been the easy way and probably will be the future when based on gas created via power2gas.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  Pumped hydro and batteries solve this variability very well.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    At grid scale?
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      yes. they don't do a good job of dealing with seasonal variability, but batteries are great at dealing with milliseconds to hours, and pumped hydro is great on scales from minutes to weeks
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

rand0mx1 4y ago

Do you have ever tried to visit your local thermal power plant?? They have backup generators which run on diesel to fulfill peak load demands.

atemerev 4y ago

Burning gas emits a lot of CO2. Nuclear power emits zero CO2. Solar and wind power do not work at night (and in overcast conditions). Weather prediction horizon is 2 week tops. Grid-scale energy storage is way too expensive. Conclusion: we need nuclear (and most certainly we don’t need gas).

_ph_ 4y ago
Solar doesn't work at night of course, but wind power does. Actually, on average, it is stronger at night. Yes, we have to supply power in the times of low renewable production. Though there are renewables which are good for it like biomass and water. Nuclear is the worst to accompany renewables, because it is the slowest power source from a load switching perspective. Gas is the one which is fast switching, that is why the typical peaker plants run on gas. They could run on oil of course, but that would be much worse. In the future, the gas is to be produced renewable, and of course energy storate has to be extended.
- atemerev 4y ago
  It’s not about “producing renewable”, it is about CO2 emissions (and about not empowering certain gas-exporting countries).
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Right, but the renewables are the one power source which is well suited going into the future. They don't use up any non-renewable source (hence the name), and they are the one energy production which is really available in most countries. All the others more or less depend on imports.
xorcist 4y ago
Nuclear can not follow load fluctuations, so nuclear needs gas (or hydro). And before the inevitable comment follows, yes, that may change with future technology. Just like everything else.
- 4y ago

throwaway4aday 4y ago

This is a confusing statement. Are you saying that there is no reasonable minimum amount of electricity that needs to be available all of the time? That would make no sense given that we never have situations where there is zero usage of electricity. In your scenario where we use renewables + gas, water, and storage which of these would be ensuring that we at least have enough to satisfy the loads on the grid that never turn off or vary? Everything on that list except gas is subject to forces we cannot directly control so I assume you would need a certain number of gas power plants to always be in production or idling to satisfy that demand. Thirdly, why the preference for gas over nuclear?

_ph_ 4y ago
Well, as statistics clearly show, there is a minimum demand 24/7. But that is just one characteristic number. That is the demand you always have to provide through the year. But at any time, more power is required, you have to provide that too. You cannot treat power demand over the "base load" any differently than the base load. Which type of energy production you might be using, you need to plan the ability to ramp up the production. So it isn't that you require special sources for the "base load", that can be provided by solar+wind, if they are available in the necessary amount. It is just that "base load" can also be provided by slow power plants. The big problem with nuclear from the grid side is, that they are the slowest power plants available. Consequently, (and because of cost efficiency) they are run at high power output levels 24/7, the rest of the grid has to adjust by being throttled or fast plants which can be ramped up and down. Gas is the fastest type of classical power plants (together with water, but that usually has limited amounts). And as the fuel always was on the expensive side, there is quite an incentive of not running gas power plants too much. They would be a good company to renewables, as they can switch between 0 and 100% and back very quickly. And in a grid dominated by renewables, you would only rarely run them at high loads for longer times. And while they emit more CO2 than nuclear plants, they do distinctively less than coal powered plans. In the long run, you can run gas plants on e.g. hydrogen produced from solar - the recent plans for extending gas power plants in Germany all included the requirement to be usable with hydrogen too.
Gwypaas 4y ago
> The baseload[1] (also base load) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week. This demand can be met by unvarying power plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which approach has the best mix of low cost, availability and high reliability in any particular market. > [...] > According to National Grid plc chief executive officer Steve Holliday and others, baseload is "outdated".[7][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load

thrown_22 4y ago

>Electric networks need to provide exactly as much power as demmanded at any point in time to remain stable. Great, so what do we do when the sun isn't shining, the wind isn't blowing and the dams are empty? Just have a second grid worth of gas plants which we turn on once every two weeks for shits and giggles?

_ph_ 4y ago
The same what I am doing when all the nuclear power plants are down. In fact this isn't going to happen and there needs to be enough fungible capacity both internally and in the European grid. Right now, France is highly dependent on the grid, as 50% of the nuclear plants are down.
dane-pgp 4y ago
> a second grid worth of gas plants which we turn on once every two weeks What if it just requires keeping the existing plants around, and turning them on for 6 hours every 8 weeks, for example? Yes, that's not 100% renewable, but it gets electricity production to 99% renewable, and that other 1% you can mitigate by doing power-to-gas / direct-air-capture.