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Arc furnaces tend to be first in line to voluntarily shutdown to deal with grid instability, or projected power shortages. Network operators will basically pay
by avianlyric 2y ago
Arc furnaces tend to be first in line to voluntarily shutdown to deal with grid instability, or projected power shortages. Network operators will basically pay them equivalent amount of money as they would to buy electricity, if the furnace operator is happy to shutdown at a moment’s notice.
After, to a power grid, removing large loads are functionally equivalent to adding additional generation. So if you’re operating an arc furnace, and can shutdown quickly (which arc furnaces can), then grid operators will pay you for privilege of being able to shut you down at moments notice, and then pay even more for the electricity you’re not consuming, if the grid is forced to call upon that additional “capacity” due other issues on grid.
I’m not sure if arc furnaces today vary their usage in direct response to variable electricity prices through the day, rather than only acting as emergency ballast to be jettisoned in an emergency. But I would be very surprised if they didn’t, they’re a large enough load that they’ll have coordinate the usage with their local grid, and large enough that shifting the usage pattern to avoid high cost peaks would save them a very material amount of money.
- kragen 2y agothere's some footage in the documentary i linked of coordinating the usage with their local grid before turning the arc furnace off for half an hour (because the next load of scrap was delayed)
- 8372049 2y ago[deleted due to severely condescending comment below]
- kragen 2y agoit's good that you're starting to learn some of the basics of how real-time energy markets work, but most of the things you have said are unfortunately nonsense
- 8372049 2y agoWhat an exceptionally unconstructive and condescending comment.
- kragen 2y agooddly enough, that's what i thought about your now-deleted misconception-filled comment, but i thought maybe it was worthwhile to try to engage positively guess i failed at that
- Dylan16807 2y agoDeleting yours removes any hope of a conversation.
- 8372049 2y agoDidn't seem like there was much hope of that with the response I got anyway. I'm not here to take condescending comments with no substance (i.e. pointing out why it supposedly was nonsense), so I decided it was better to remove the comment and move on.
- Dylan16807 2y agoOkay but this way it's hard not to treat it as if you did in fact post nonsense. And whether you said something right or wrong I at least would have liked to see it. Especially when it gets a callout like that.
- kragen 2y agoif you want to read plausible misconceptions about electric grid operations and stability you can get gpt-4 to generate an unbounded stream of them
- 8372049 2y ago> Okay but this way it's hard not to treat it as if you did in fact post nonsense. All the more reason for me to stop engaging, isn't it? The gist of it was that nuclear power is insufficient in and of itself because it is hard to regulate output to match grid requirements, and therefore that we need both nuclear and renewable energy sources, not just one or the other. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not, I'm out of here either way.