4 ms·
Assuming there is no solution to when the sun is not shining you still managed to reduce the usage of coal, no?
by cinntaile 3y ago
Assuming there is no solution to when the sun is not shining you still managed to reduce the usage of coal, no?
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoNo, because you can't switch off the coal power plant on spot, it takes around a week.
- cbmuser 3y agoYou actually can and we're doing that in Germany. The plants remain on stand-by. However, you always need conventional power plants on the grid as otherwise you won't be able to do load-following. Most 100%-renewable-energy plans suffer from a deficit of knowledge how large electricity grids actually work. There is a reason why there is no 100%-renewable-energy grid anywhere in the world which does not heavily rely on hydro power or geothermal power.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoBut you are still burning coal, because you need to keep them hot, otherwise they will get damaged.
- cinntaile 3y agoYou can (and this is being done in practice) regulate the power output instead of turning it off completely and then turning it on again, doing it your way would be extremely detrimental to the power plant's life due to thermal stress. It's also the case that different coal plants have different capabilities so when you claim it takes a around week to turn off a plant, you should provide some more information about the plant (type) you're talking about.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoYou can disconnect output, yet you need to still burn coal anyway, unless you want to damage the coal power plant.
- cinntaile 3y agoI'm not talking about disconnecting output, I'm talking about reducing it. You don't burn as much coal, which was my original statement.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoBut idle = power plant still running on 80% so you are still using 80% of coal input to just keep it running on empty.
- cinntaile 3y agoCoal plants for load following end up around 20-40%, nowhere near your 80% number. They have to, because the energy grid demands that they're capable of doing this because it's just not economical to run them at 80% when there is such variability.