Solar power & Wind Power for residental use

[truckdiagnostics]

Well; do you ever answere a question requireing facts??

You mean he should go find a Rolling Stone magazine article to back up what he is saying?

 

[Egon]

You mean he should go find a Rolling Stone magazine article to back up what he is saying?

Ah-well no I best not.

 

[Redneck in training]

JCB

The problem now is that the electric market and the renewable subsidies distort the market. They place a disportionate penalty on high capital base load generation (large coal and nuclear) and favor construction of natural gas plants (especially lower efficiency units). This is even worse in the US than Canada because the US subsidies are based on generation, not construction which means the renewables can sell electricity at negative rates (pay to generate) and still have positive cash flow.

Wind is an even bigger problem than solar because it does generate at night when the power isn't needed. Nuclear plants in the Midwest regularly have to pay to avoid the costs of shutdown and startup and sometimes are forced reduce power or shut down simply because there is no market. The subsidies were originally intended to support start up of a new technology but now have become an apparent permanent factor in the market.

Hawaii is the optimum place for residential grid connected solar because of the mild climate and very high cost of electricity. However, they have had to place moratoriums on solar installation because the variation of generation has threatened the stability of the grid.

It's a complex problem and will probably have some very high system costs before we can add a lot of distributed generation to the system.

Wind turbines can be shut down. Most of wind turbines in IA are utility owned and are 100% dispatchable. Coal and nuclear are typically around 20% dispatchable. That's why we have street lights. Street lights were sold to public as a safety feature but real reason was to provide load for power generators at night. Since cities have to pay for night electric power, in order to save money, most street light were retrofitted to high efficiency fixtures lowering the night load. Much lower night load and cheap NG is another stimulus for building NG fired power plants.

 

[buickanddeere]

Wind turbines can be shut down. Most of wind turbines in IA are utility owned and are 100% dispatchable. Coal and nuclear are typically around 20% dispatchable. That's why we have street lights. Street lights were sold to public as a safety feature but real reason was to provide load for power generators at night. Since cities have to pay for night electric power, in order to save money, most street light were retrofitted to high efficiency fixtures lowering the night load. Much lower night load and cheap NG is another stimulus for building NG fired power plants.

Dispatchable power means being able to start or stop it at will. Wind and solar can be shut down but they can not be forced to start during still winds or at night.
In Ontario if wind or solar is "dispatched" off. The wind or solar generator is still paid as if power was being generated. The saving are that Hydro One now pas less to give surplus power to NY and Michigan.

 

[KennyG]

Wind turbines can be shut down. Most of wind turbines in IA are utility owned and are 100% dispatchable.

Wind really isn't dispatchable. The capacity factor of wind turbines is about 30% which means that sometimes they generate 50% of capacity, sometimes 100% and sometimes 0%. In theory wind turbines can be reduced in power (from 100% or 20% or whatever) but they can't be increased to full capacity if the wind isn't there. In practice they are almost never required to shut down. In the US the subsidy is a production subsidy so the economics depend on maximizing generation. They have priority so they only shut down if everything else is shut down and there is still not enough demand.

Existing Boiling Water nuclear units can usually quickly ramp down to 50%. Some pressurized water reactors are intended to only swing by 20% or 30% but newer designs are designed for 50%+ swings.

 

[JCByrd24]

Large coal and nuclear have penalties because there are very real drawbacks to them. Have you seen the air quality in China? People are not designed to live in an environment produced by industry disregarding the impact to the environment (not referring to nuclear here). Solar and wind produce emissions free power. Yes you have to build them and that takes resources and has environmental impact. We build tons of other stuff that has huge impact and produces zero power. And we build tons of stuff that then burns something to produce power, producing more emissions. This is the same point I made in my original post. And yes, something that produces power without burning something else is going to likely be cheaper than buying that stuff to burn to produce power and thus cause "unfair" competition for those burning coal. Maybe your grandchildren will have clean air to breath because of it. I really can't believe I'm having to argue that people should have the right to put solar panels on their roofs to produce their own freaking clean power without power companies going to the government to try to stop it.

Wind and solar (and hydro) should absolutely have priority when there is low demand, they're not burning something to make the power!

Don't you see that a large part of the daily supply/demand price fluctuation would be solved by solar increasing to a significant level over time, decreasing the delta between peak and offpeak loads would mean more stability for traditional plants.

 

[buickanddeere]

Large coal and nuclear have penalties because there are very real drawbacks to them. Have you seen the air quality in China? People are not designed to live in an environment produced by industry disregarding the impact to the environment. Solar and wind produce emissions free power. Yes you have to build them and that takes resources and has environmental impact. We build tons of other stuff that has huge impact and produces zero power. And we build tons of stuff that then burns something to produce power, producing more emissions. This is the same point I made in my original post. And yes, something that produces power without burning something else is going to likely be cheaper than buying that stuff to burn to produce power and thus cause "unfair" competition for those burning coal. Maybe your grandchildren will have clean air to breath because of it. I really can't believe I'm having to argue that people should have the right to put solar panels on their roofs to produce their own freaking clean power without power companies going to the government to try to stop it.

Wind and solar (and hydro) should absolutely have priority when there is low demand, they're not burning something to make the power!

Ever look down wind of the Nanticoke or Lampton plants when they were operating? No smoke, no particulate, no sulfur dioxide etc. The plants burned clean coal and were equipped with precipitators and scrubbers. You are not telling the truth when calling coal dirty power.
Nuclear have drawback and penalties. How about living in a town or city with every home burning coal or wood to keep warm in the winter or freeze to death. Do you wan to sweat in the summer without AC and have food spoil without refrigeration ? tell use what is more dangerous?
Solar panels are manufactured from toxic materials, check it out. Solar panels are not made in fairyland from pixie dust and transported by Unicorns.
Where do you live that you think that power companies are preventing you form installing PV cells on your roof?
I see you are playing the the classic " worried about out grandchildren" card to whip up emotion instead of logical decisions.

Here is all out positive proof that you have no idea about the electrical grid. Your statement speaks for it's self. Quote " Wind and solar should absolutely have priority when there is low demand, they're not burning something to make the power!" Unquote.
What is it that you do for a living ?

 

[JCByrd24]

I'm a licensed engineer not in the power industry, never claimed to be. How old are you and what industry do you work in? Let me guess 50+ and the oil/gas/coal/power industry.

And I never claimed I couldn't have panels on my roof, I do have them. Maine is on the greener side of things and has pretty neutral net metering laws. Also power isn't cheap here so the payback isn't bad as I tried to express way back in this post along with explaining to you what grid tied solar was as your were ranting about how solar would never pay for itself and you had to live like a hermit. Right next door in NH however there is a cap on solar installations at 1% that has now been reached, not sure whether thats 1% of customers or total production or what.

I really cannot follow the rest of your post about houses burning coal and food spoiling...

As to solar panels being made of toxic things, I said right in my previous post that they had environmental impact in building them. So do tractors, TVs, power plants, baseball stadiums, you name it....none of those produce emissions free power once built.

Explain to me why you think we should not use power that is emissions free when available and instead should burn something to make power....

 

[Larry Caldwell]

To those who work with radiation or are familiar with it. The leakage off shore from Japan is very low level. Much less than naturally occurring uranium, radon, cession, strontium, and thorium in the soil and rocks under homes around the world. Granite counter tops that food is prepared on is considered nuclear waste at a generating station. So are alkaline batteries ,tungsten grinding wheels, smoke detectors and Coleman lantern mantles. The public are not concerned items with those "high levels" of radiation.
A banana from the grocery store is several orders of magnitude more energetic than what drifted onto the west coast of North America .
The Japanese reactor hydrogen explosions would not have occurred if operators and engineers had been able to do what was logical and vent.instead of bowing to emotional political decisions by officials and filling primary and secondary containment with a fuel air bomb.

What does your "new periodic table elements" supposed to mean?
Widely scattered energy sources are problem with both cost and reliability .
I do not understand what pouge, carberator, merry breezes and carrying tales means .
Transmission monopoly???

They are trying to convince people that the ongoing Fukushima leak is negligible, but every year the concentration of radioactive materials increases, and it is starting to show real world effects. People who pay attention have quit eating fish out of the North Pacific.

Pacific Coast fishermen provide proof (photos) that Fukushima is contaminating U.S. fish with radioactive material - Altered Dimensions Paranormal

 

[Larry Caldwell]

The problem with solar and wind is that they are feeding into an infrastructure that was not designed to use energy directly. I have a friend who designed an off-grid solar and wind powered home. With forethought, the amount of electricity required is minimal, mostly just for control systems and low velocity pumps. He used 70 cubic yards of concrete as thermal mass for a hydronic heating/cooling system. The windmill runs a 3-tier heat pump system that heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Centrifugal clutches control whether the windmill runs 1, 2 or 3 pumps. Domestic hot water is solar. The range, refrigerator, freezer and clothes dryer are propane. Domestic water is a DC pump powered by PV cells that pumps into a gravity feed cistern. A separate PV/inverter system powers the house electricity, with a generator available when large amounts of power are needed. The inverter will run the washing machine, but he doesn't do laundry at night.

If this were a grid linked system, the generator would not be necessary. There isn't much peak power demand, because he uses the energy directly instead of generating electricity. A long shower takes no power. The environment inside the house is delightful, and comfortable year round.

Unfortunately, our electrical grid feeds buildings that were designed in the era of wood heat. Are you cold? Set something on fire. The only difference is that a thermostat does it automatically, but the house has no inherent energy stability. To get up, make breakfast and take a shower you have to suck kilowatt-hours off the grid.

The key to alternative energy sources is to eliminate electricity as much as possible. PV is a really clunky way to use solar, and wind generators are needlessly complex. Why generate electricity to run a pump when you can power the pump directly from the windmill?