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How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

blog.gridstatus.io

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Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#71

Post by kmax12 »

leymed wrote: post #67
kmax12 wrote: post #54

I helped write this! The data behind all the graphs in this post is here: https://www.gridstatus.io/dashboards/ercot-nuke-trip-july-20... If you like grid data, we have a lot more info for the entire country here: https://www.gridstatus.io/live

Those links are very informative. Can you elaborate on Ancillary Services Monitor and Energy Storage Resource Action dashboards? What’s the installed capacity that supported? Also your original post link states event happened at 7:02 AM, your links here points to 8:05 AM. Can you explain this?

You may need to check the time zone as some pages automatically adjust to local time of your browser. It happened at 7am CT.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#72

Post by rtkwe »

adrianmonk wrote: post #21
rtkwe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transmission lines run to solar farms should be able to take 100% of the output of the farm and then some otherwise the farm was over built and wasted money.

At short distances from the solar farm, yes. But it's not 100% in every direction for arbitrarily long distance. At some point, you assume the energy will be tend to be used sort of near where it's generated. To put it another way, if you build solar between city A and city B, would you build it so it can still be fully utilized even if city A stops using any power and city B wants all of it? No, you assume city A is…

Generally they connect directly to large back bone transmission lines that carry power far beyond the local area though not directly to more balkanized power zones. On a large scale yes if critical junctures go out the rest can't take the full load but that's different than a single plant being overspecced for the transmission capability it's connected to.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#73

Post by leymed »

kmax12 wrote: post #71
leymed wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those links are very informative. Can you elaborate on Ancillary Services Monitor and Energy Storage Resource Action dashboards? What’s the installed capacity that supported? Also your original post link states event happened at 7:02 AM, your links here points to 8:05 AM. Can you explain this?

You may need to check the time zone as some pages automatically adjust to local time of your browser. It happened at 7am CT.

That makes sense, I'm in EST.

Just to clarify and understand what happened, I believe right after the trip some generators all around the grid picked up the load (unless UFLS was activated) immediately (around 7:03), we can call these generators support system. Then around 7:05 batteries kicked in with 468 MW, as a support to support system.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#74

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Herz wrote: post #68
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stating facts is “ideological propaganda”? Work with the world, not against it.

These are lies you tell yourself and how you want people to see you. In a past discussion, you concluded by saying that those who support nuclear energy also support fossil fuels. These are your ideological premises; you don't care about creating a better world, nor are you interested in facts and problems. You only care about your vision of things and making it prevail over others. There's no need to know anything e…

Given how the rightwing conservative politics have shifted from pure climate change denial to harping nuclear as the non-solution to prolong our reliance on fossil fuels the link is clear.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#75

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

dgacmu wrote: post #69
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stating facts is “ideological propaganda”? Work with the world, not against it.

Your comments are coming across as lacking nuance ("nuclear is the worst possible...", for example). Nuclear has a place depending on how you weigh specific factors in your grid design. It's zero carbon. It's hideously expensive, particularly in capex. It's generally quite reliable and its availability is mostly uncorrelated with that of solar and wind. it's modestly dispatchable - you can scale down to 60% or so in…

Hideously expensive and any plant announced today will not be online in time to have any material effect on our fight against climate change.

Which means funding diverted from renewables to nuclear will prolong our fight against climate change.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#76

Post by Herz »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #75
dgacmu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments are coming across as lacking nuance ("nuclear is the worst possible...", for example). Nuclear has a place depending on how you weigh specific factors in your grid design. It's zero carbon. It's hideously expensive, particularly in capex. It's generally quite reliable and its availability is mostly uncorrelated with that of solar and wind. it's modestly dispatchable - you can scale down to 60% or so in…

Hideously expensive and any plant announced today will not be online in time to have any material effect on our fight against climate change. Which means funding diverted from renewables to nuclear will prolong our fight against climate change.

> Hideously expensive and any plant announced today will not be online in time to have any material effect on our fight against climate change

False, we have 26 years to decarbonize, all the time it takes to build any number of nuclear power plants in any country in the world.

> Which means funding diverted from renewables to nuclear will prolong our fight against climate change.

We can say the same thing about renewables. Then come and tell me you are not ideological... Where is the mathematical certainty that batteries at scale will be available everywhere and for everyone by 2050? If you come from the future, prove it to me and I will agree with you.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#77

Post by jeffbee »

m463 wrote: post #53
jeffbee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more interesting thing about rotating power plants is that they are routinely destroyed by transmission outages, because when a rotating generator is suddenly disconnected from its load, there are infinity terms in the equations that govern its motion and infinity isn't a thing you can resist. For steam turbines the control system has to slam the valve shut on the steam, otherwise the machine would overspeed, and…

I don't see why there can't be load resistors (like locomotives use) to gracefully handle these sorts of situations.

An SD40 locomotive can dissipate about 500kW that way, so you would need the equivalent of 2000 locomotives worth of resistors and fans to sink the 1 or 2GW or more that a fission power station produces.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#78

Post by ehvatum »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #74
Herz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are lies you tell yourself and how you want people to see you. In a past discussion, you concluded by saying that those who support nuclear energy also support fossil fuels. These are your ideological premises; you don't care about creating a better world, nor are you interested in facts and problems. You only care about your vision of things and making it prevail over others. There's no need to know anything e…

Given how the rightwing conservative politics have shifted from pure climate change denial to harping nuclear as the non-solution to prolong our reliance on fossil fuels the link is clear.

Nuclear power derives its energy from the binding energy of ultra-heavy atomic nuclei, not fossil fuels. This energy can then be used to power electric cars, avoiding fossil fuel consumption. Furthermore, unlike wind and solar energy, nuclear power generation is not tied to the vagaries of weather, meaning that it doesn’t require burning millions of cubic meters of natural gas every overcast, calm day. For this reason, Russia historically was the largest single benefactor of Germany’s green euphoria: it prolongs fossil fuel reliance.

So often, emotional thinking leads to conclusions that are opposed to reality. You really have to watch out for it, if you want good results.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#79

Post by rcxdude »

jeffbee wrote: post #45
bell-cot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The maximum slow-down of the turbines (before the generator trips off-line, removing the load on it) is far less than you seem to assume. The article's graph shows the 60.00Hz grid frequency dropping...all the way to 59.92Hz. That's 0.1333%. For an on-line gas turbine, the time to ramp up production is the second or few needed for the automated controls to open the throttle on the "Gas IN" pipe. It's basically a natu…

The more interesting thing about rotating power plants is that they are routinely destroyed by transmission outages, because when a rotating generator is suddenly disconnected from its load, there are infinity terms in the equations that govern its motion and infinity isn't a thing you can resist. For steam turbines the control system has to slam the valve shut on the steam, otherwise the machine would overspeed, and…

While the infinity terms may be a useful way to think about how the system loses stability, I think it's better to think of it in terms of energy: at any given time there's some amount of energy that's been injected into the system in the form of hot gas which hasn't been converted yet. Even a few seconds worth is a lot of energy, and if the electrical load is removed, that energy has to go somewhere.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#80

Post by rcxdude »

jeffbee wrote: post #77
m463 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why there can't be load resistors (like locomotives use) to gracefully handle these sorts of situations.

An SD40 locomotive can dissipate about 500kW that way, so you would need the equivalent of 2000 locomotives worth of resistors and fans to sink the 1 or 2GW or more that a fission power station produces.

If you wanted to do so continuously. If you're just handling an impulse you don't need so much, but it's gotta absorb a lot of energy quickly.
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