Battery Maintainer - Good/Bad/Ugly?

[arizona98tj]

It takes, what about a week to spin up a nuclear plant and two weeks to cool it off?.

I just retired from 30 years working at the largest nuke plant in the U.S., the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station near Phoenix, AZ. It takes about two to three days to come up to power and shutdown is about the same. Were this not so, we couldn't do a refueling and maintenance outage in the 30 days we are allotted. Nuclear plants are baseload plants and run 24x7, 365 days a year except for an outage. Other power plants are brought online as necessary to supply the demands on the grid, the cheapest producers being used first. You are correct in that wind and solar would not be a base load plant since they cannot produce a constant output. Gas turbine plants are the fastest to bring up and shutdown which makes them a great peaking plant, albeit they are usually the most expensive to run.

 

[def38]

Wind and solar cannot maintain base level power and from what I understand are a complete PITA for nat gas, coal, and nuclear plants to integrate with.

It takes, what about a week to spin up a nuclear plant and two weeks to cool it off? Try integrating that into the varying output of solar and wind.

Wind and solar do not respond to varying load demand well unless you have redundant capacity. That's like having an extra car in your garage if first one gets a flat.

Throttling a nuke is straightforward however, once online, nukes are best left on line. Flame fired boilers are also easily throttled...just add more or less fuel and condense while meeting demand.

Solar and wind are also costly for their output and they are **** ugly. I sure wouldn't want a wind farm anywhere near me.

Coal, steam, turbine and generator are still the lowest cost per KW. My guess is hydro is 2nd lowest.

 

[Musdalen]

I'm not sure what wind farms have to do with battery minders, but we have a heck of a lot of windfarms around here and they do seem to be working and providing a significant proportion of the state's electricity. I have heard something like 20-30% They are easy to "throttle". Just trim the blades. Of course they have maxima that are breeze dependent but choking them down is not a problem.

 

[FatTire]

Solar and wind are also costly for their output and they are **** ugly. I sure wouldn't want a wind farm anywhere near me.

But you'd be ok with a coal fired power plant near you?

 

[newbury]

Was a good thread until someone had to hijack it.
Can we get back to battery maintainers for tractors?
or at least Clint Eastwood films?

A "North American supplier"?
Maybe a North American seller!
But .... most probably,...... a North or South Asia manufacturer.

Oh no!
Surely you've got it all wrong!
Isn't coal BAD ???
The Chinese are actually bringing one coal fired plant on line every week!
We have been killing off our coal plants a quickly as possible.
Coal pollutes!
The "tree huggers" want to save us from coal pollution!
What a "crock"!
The USA contributes only approximately 5% of the worlds coal pollution!
The "tree huggers" should all be sent to China!

THANK YOU!
Perhaps you will be able to power your battery charger with a bicycle generator.
I SHALL CONSIDER MYSELF APPROPRIATELY SPANKED !!!

Apparently electricity is "politics" for you.
It is a necessity for me!

Been to China many times.
That was a reference for my response.
95% of the coal pollution comes from outside the USA.
We need cheap, clean, coal for the health of our economy.
There is NOTHING "political" about that!

Wind and solar cannot maintain base level power and from what I understand are a complete PITA for nat gas, coal, and nuclear plants to integrate with.

It takes, what about a week to spin up a nuclear plant and two weeks to cool it off? Try integrating that into the varying output of solar and wind.

I just retired from 30 years working at the largest nuke plant in the U.S., the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station near Phoenix, AZ. It takes about two to three days to come up to power and shutdown is about the same. Were this not so, we couldn't do a refueling and maintenance outage in the 30 days we are allotted. Nuclear plants are baseload plants and run 24x7, 365 days a year except for an outage. Other power plants are brought online as necessary to supply the demands on the grid, the cheapest producers being used first. You are correct in that wind and solar would not be a base load plant since they cannot produce a constant output. Gas turbine plants are the fastest to bring up and shutdown which makes them a great peaking plant, albeit they are usually the most expensive to run.

Wind and solar do not respond to varying load demand well unless you have redundant capacity. That's like having an extra car in your garage if first one gets a flat.

Throttling a nuke is straightforward however, once online, nukes are best left on line. Flame fired boilers are also easily throttled...just add more or less fuel and condense while meeting demand.

Solar and wind are also costly for their output and they are **** ugly. I sure wouldn't want a wind farm anywhere near me.

Coal, steam, turbine and generator are still the lowest cost per KW. My guess is hydro is 2nd lowest.

I'm not sure what wind farms have to do with battery minders, but we have a heck of a lot of windfarms around here and they do seem to be working and providing a significant proportion of the state's electricity. I have heard something like 20-30% They are easy to "throttle". Just trim the blades. Of course they have maxima that are breeze dependent but choking them down is not a problem.

But you'd be ok with a coal fired power plant near you?

 

[Snowback]

Was a good thread until someone had to hijack it.
Can we get back to battery maintainers for tractors?
or at least Clint Eastwood films?

LOL! Sorry everyone for planting a debate seed. Update is that the Micro Solar maintainer is working like a champ! No low voltage alerts on the battery from my GPS tracker, and the tractor fired right up last weekend with STRONG cranking after sitting since early January. The amount of charge provided during the day is more than enough to compensate for the parasitic draw from the tracking unit.

As to why solar? It is simply because the machine is stored in a shed out back and I did not feel like running power all the way out there at this time. Rest assured I love trees, but I also love fossil fuels as I am a Petroleum Engineer! In my opinion we need all fuels and should encourage clean and prudent use of all resources that our creator has provided for us. Just trying to do my part.