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They have to shut down coal fired power plants when the windmills produce excess power. Oh, the humanity!
by octatone2 14y ago
They have to shut down coal fired power plants when the windmills produce excess power. Oh, the humanity!
- 46Bit 14y agoI wouldn't call that a good thing. You generally can't turn off/on a coal plant in a hurry. What they're probably doing is just braking the turbines and still burning some fuel. (Edited, realised it sounded confrontational to begin with.)
- tvladeck 14y agoThis is correct. In addition there are a number of other ways that grid operators can displace power. This has happened a few times before in Western Europe, and prices have even gone below zero, incentivizing industrial facilities to do things like turn up their refrigerators to soak power
- rayiner 14y agoThose coal plants will be all gone soon, and replaced with gas turbine plants which you can shut on/off in a hurry.
- tvladeck 14y agoYou generally leave the baseload (coal + nuclear) on, and shut down "peaking" capacity, which is, at least in the US, mainly natural gas. Coal is more expensive to build, more expensive to turn on, and cheaper to operate. Nat Gas is cheaper to build, cheaper to turn on, and more expensive to operate
- rayiner 14y agoI know you're speaking from the power plant's perspective, but factoring in externalities, natural gas is cheaper to operate than coal. Nuclear is really cheaper. Wind is about the same as coal.
- morsch 14y agoAll of the things you state as facts are subject to long-running debates.
- rayiner 14y agoNot really. There are debates about his much, but with regard to coal specifically, it's so bad you can ignore things like global warming entirely and it still comes out more expensive.
- tvladeck 14y agooh, absolutely - this doesn't consider the social cost of carbon, or even the social cost (health costs) of particulate emissions.