How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip • Hacker News Board

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#81

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

Herz wrote: post #76

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 renew…

About 20 years from being announced. Compare with renewables taking 1-5 years depending on if it is solar or offshore wind.

Say 5 years for renewables.

This means that investing in nuclear will have 15 years of cumulative emissions before anything is curbed.

Meaning, even if the renewable options ends up solving only 80% of the problem it will take until somewhere 2080-90 for the “perfect” nuclear solution to have less cumulative emissions.

Even if renewables are completely unable to solve the entire problem we can invest in them and then in 2060 and still be ahead of nuclear power, and then choose it as the final solution.

Today it is simply lunacy proposed by the fossil fuel industry or people looking for the perfect solution rather than piecemeal solving the issue.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#82

Post by mariushn » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 8:07 PM UTC

huijzer wrote: post #11

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Something interesting is that with substantial solar and batteries being deployed in the ERCOT market (in scope grid operator for this piece), solar generation in excess of what the grid can consume with load combined with grid forming inverters (vs traditional grid following) can step in when called upon if a traditionally firmer generator (coal or nuclear) trips out. The potential is already there (photons hitting…

An individual inverter can usually switch in about 4 ms. A Tesla Megapack can go from 0% output to max output in 100 ms. Conversely, gas turbines (the fastest type of traditional power plant) takes about a minute to go from say 40% to 60%. Even in the fastest possible design, there is a mechanical rotor (kinetic energy) that has to change speed. What I mean to say is that solar and batteries are likely an order of ma…

How many Tesla Megapacks are needed to replace a nuclear plant temporary outage? And for for long can they provide that power?

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#83

Post by gunapologist99 » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 10:19 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #32

megaman821 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a single thing you said about batteries is true. Pumped hydro is in no way competitive with batteries for most locations. In the future it is likely they won't be competitive in any location.

Better still; the amount of deployed batteries world wide is projected to overtake the amount of deployed hydro this year. Pumped hydro is barely growing. Battery capacity is growing exponentially to eclipse it this year. That's driven by pure economics. Cheaper, better, faster, etc.

Neither of these points are conflicting with my argument. Just because batteries are being deployed it (and I agree that it's cheaper and faster, but not necessarily better on all axes) doesn't mean that their manufacturer is not damaging the environment.

In fact, battery manufacture is not damaging the environment in most places where first-world people live, so perhaps they just don't care, but I think that's pretty sad.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#84

Post by 31carmichael » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 6:24 AM UTC

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…

This is true only if the protection does not operate as designed. They are NOT routinely destroyed by transmission outages. You have been misinformed. Rotating machines cannot overspeed instantly, as they have inertia.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#85

Post by jeffbee » Thu, Aug 01, 2024, 3:26 PM UTC

31carmichael wrote: post #84

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…

This is true only if the protection does not operate as designed. They are NOT routinely destroyed by transmission outages. You have been misinformed. Rotating machines cannot overspeed instantly, as they have inertia.

Dozens of power plants blew up steam rupture disks during the 2003 northeast outage. EPA, FERC, and NYISO all mention this in their reports.

Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip

#86

Post by jillesvangurp » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 4:56 AM UTC

gunapologist99 wrote: post #83

jillesvangurp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better still; the amount of deployed batteries world wide is projected to overtake the amount of deployed hydro this year. Pumped hydro is barely growing. Battery capacity is growing exponentially to eclipse it this year. That's driven by pure economics. Cheaper, better, faster, etc.

Neither of these points are conflicting with my argument. Just because batteries are being deployed it (and I agree that it's cheaper and faster, but not necessarily better on all axes) doesn't mean that their manufacturer is not damaging the environment. In fact, battery manufacture is not damaging the environment in most places where first-world people live, so perhaps they just don't care, but I think that's prett…

If that wasn't clear, I wasn't trying to challenge your argument; just adding to it. And you are right by adding more arguments to the pile. Not disagreeing at all.