Wind Farms

[Silly Sausage]

I'll let Wikipedia explain it to you, as I really can't be arsed having such an illinformed debate

Hahaha....anyone who references Wiki to back up their arguments, really needs to reconsider their sources!

 

[Besoeker]

would you like to have a think about what the biggest engineering project ever in the UK was, at least up til the channel tunnel and cross rail? and why it was needed?

Do tell.....

 

[Knobhead]

It would help if the scale showing each power source was the same

U.K. National Grid status

 

[Knobhead]

Something I think should be given more consideration in UK cities is district heating.

Nottingham has the Eastcroft waste incineration plant which exports HP steam. This goes around the city centre via a dual ring main. It feeds most major buildings and a couple of housing estates. All of Victoria Centre (Fairy Towers) is heated via this system.
Any excess steam is fed in to the most unassuming little building on London Rd. Inside is a 14.5MV turbine which is used to dispose of the excess steam and feeds in to the local 33KV ring. This is used to stabilise the steam demand on the system.
From what the station superintendent told me a second turbine is to be installed to cope with the increased output of the incineration plant.

The down side:
Behind the generator house are the heat exchangers. Steam that can’t be used for power generation or district heating has to go somewhere. Basically it’s dumped in the exchangers and goes as heat in to the atmosphere.

 

[Engineer54]

would you like to have a think about what the biggest engineering project ever in the UK was, at least up til the channel tunnel and cross rail? and why it was needed?

In terms of what, .... the Engineering or MONEY??

 

[Besoeker]

It would help if the scale showing each power source was the same

I don't see a problem with appropriate scaling.
Would you want all your ammeters to be 0-10kA?

 

[Knobhead]

For a site showing comparisons then a common scale would be helpful.

The display as it is distorts the various power sources.

 

[Besoeker]

For a site showing comparisons then a common scale would be helpful.

The display as it is distorts the various power sources.

It gives actual numbers as well.
I don't understand why you would have any difficulty with that.

 

[Knobhead]

I don’t have any difficulty with it. Joe public will.

Not everyone has an engineering background.

The places I’ve worked the intakes used summation metering. You had to know how to interpret the readings you were looking at otherwise they were meaningless.

BTW. The total intake ammeter did go to 7.5KA @11KV

 

[Besoeker]

I don’t have any difficulty with it. Joe public will.

Anyone who can't read actual digits might.

 

[Gavin A]

Hahaha....anyone who references Wiki to back up their arguments, really needs to reconsider their sources!

not really, I was using it deliberately to make the point that it should be common knowledge for anyone with half a clue about the UK electrical supply industry if even wikipedia has a decent article about it.


In France at 4am on the Thursday night, demand fell to 39GW, but they were still generating 48GW, 44GW of which was from Nuclear. At 8am demand has risen to 55GW, and nuclear has risen to 47GW.

So even after all their economy 7 night storage heater efforts, their demand fluctuates by around 30%, but nuclear can only fluctuate by 6%. The remainder has to be absorbed by pump storage, or export over night, then the peak has to be supplied via back up generation.

So they basically need at least 30% peaking capacity compared to nuclear capacity, and maybe 15% or so capacity to absorb or export excess night time generation.

By comparison, in the UK our consumption fluctuates by around 50% daily from peak to trough, so we'd either need to have a massive programme of overnight storage heaters, or maybe electric vehicle charging to get our demand curve more like the French, or we'd need to have something like 40% additional daily absorption and peaking capacity, and bare in mind that we would be unable to export it down our main interconnector to france, or any countries surrounding france because they would have no capacity to absorb the excess because they're already absorbing Frances excess (including the 2GW France currently sends to our pump storage capacity every night).

By comparison, wind, solar etc don't actually need any capacity to absorb excess generation, they can simply be switched off if there's excess, and we already possess all the peaking plants required in the form of our existing gas plants, and to some extent coal plants (which I'd like to see kept on limited hours for winter peak demand periods / long periods without wind), along with the existing pump storage and hydro capacity.

Therefore this line of argument is complete nonsense, high levels of nuclear penetration would probably require significantly more investment in the capacity to absorb the excess night time generation, on top of the peaking requirements than high levels of renewables penetration (depending on how that is implemented).

Clear enough?

 

[Gavin A]

In terms of what, .... the Engineering or MONEY??

in economic terms it would have cost over £5 billion today, in engineering terms it required 12 million tonnes of earth and rock to be dug out, features Europes largest man made underground caverns housing 6 massive turbines 750m inside the mountain, 16km of tunnels etc.

And we'd need to build at least one, probably 2 more of them of similar scale if we were to go for a majority nuclear based power system - the original plan had a 2nd to be built on dartmoor IIRC. Prior to Thatcher privatising the industry, and no private sector interest in building such a costly infrastructure for nuclear when it was far cheaper to build gas power stations and use up our north sea gas reserves at twice the rate we should have done.