How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
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How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
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Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#2Something 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 panels), simply turned down to align with grid demand (curtailment), but if the sun is shining and PV is called upon, curtailment can quickly turn into emergency grid support as long as the sun is shining (I am not familiar how long it takes from ISO signal to inverter command).
It would be cool if individual generators shared this curtailment status/reserve in realtime publicly similar to how ERCOT reports real time generation mix data.
Citations:
Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#3Where does the 1500MW of heat the reactor is producing go, immediately after the generators are isolated from the grid?
Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#4Something 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…
Most curtailment IIRC is due to insufficient transmission capacity. I doubt curtailed solar can be called upon in an emergency unless the emergency is located very close to the curtailed solar.
Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#5Where does the 1500MW of heat the reactor is producing go, immediately after the generators are isolated from the grid?
Water? Same place it was going
Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#6Where does the 1500MW of heat the reactor is producing go, immediately after the generators are isolated from the grid?
The reactor is turned down and rapidly stops producing that much heat. On site backups keep the pumps running to continue cooling the residual heat. There's a long slow tail as lower energy fusion chains tail off towards lead but the vast majority of the power comes down quickly.
Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#7Something 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…
Most curtailment IIRC is due to insufficient transmission capacity. I doubt curtailed solar can be called upon in an emergency unless the emergency is located very close to the curtailed solar.
It's a fair point (why curtailment is in effect), and I think speaks to the fact that more granular and timely data is needed wrt all nodes and transmission segment within the system. Also a call for more batteries everywhere between generation and load.
With regards to transmission congestion, that is easily fixed with installing batteries at currently storageless renewable generation facilities (the batteries then charge with excess solar, and can continue to discharge after the sun sets or the wind dies down, maximizing transmission utilization temporally). The Inflation Reduction Act also enables those batteries to charge from utility side if needed, whereas before they could only charge from the renewable generation (AC vs DC coupling).
Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#8Where does the 1500MW of heat the reactor is producing go, immediately after the generators are isolated from the grid?
Enthalpy of vaporization for water is very very large.
The amount of heat that can be dissipated by evaporating water is kind of incredible.
Re: How the electricity markets respond to a nuclear trip
#9Something 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…
Most curtailment IIRC is due to insufficient transmission capacity. I doubt curtailed solar can be called upon in an emergency unless the emergency is located very close to the curtailed solar.
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.