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The "Smart Grid"
- Thread starter TEG
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- Energy Environment Policy
Adm
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China's State Grid and BYD Launch World's Largest Battery Energy Storage Station
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-state-grid-and-byd-launch-worlds-largest-battery-energy-storage-station-2011-12-30
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-state-grid-and-byd-launch-worlds-largest-battery-energy-storage-station-2011-12-30
Chinese chain reactions are nothing new: Banqiao Dam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In the linked incident, the Chinese engineer that pointed out the design flaws leading to catastrophic chain reaction failure, was removed from the project - before things happened like he said. In spite of better knowledge, they went the wrong way. Here is hoping that someone learned that lesson, though.
Yep. I had been thinking about posting how, in the wholesale power industry, standards are so high that we needn't worry about such problems, and that is true (IMO) in the U.S. and western Europe. As Chernobyl, Fukushima and Banqiao Dam demonstrate, however, these same high standards aren't followed everywhere.
Smart meter SSL screw-up exposes punters' TV habits • The Register
This sets my BS meter off. I mean, what is the temporal resolution of the data they are logging? Yet alone transmitting?
This sets my BS meter off. I mean, what is the temporal resolution of the data they are logging? Yet alone transmitting?
Chevy Volt: Charging With Renewable Energy?
Design News - Captain Hybrid - Chevy Volt: Chargeable With Renewable Energy?
Design News - Captain Hybrid - Chevy Volt: Chargeable With Renewable Energy?
No, it isn't. If instead OnStar grabbed the day-ahead price forecast and the real-time price stream, it could charge at the cheapest period. That would be meaningful. Electrons don't get little tags, like internet packets, that can be routed to your car. Nor does this proposed system send more money to renewable generators to encourage them to build. It's just a fake feel-good program.
Norbert
TSLA will win
I don't see how that would be very meaningful, either, unless there was some point in time where renewable energy would otherwise be wasted, which I don't think there is. As far as I know the best time to charge is when demand is lowest, somewhere between 1 am and early morning. Although there might be exceptions, but I haven't heard of any.
We are at the point where renewable energy is wasted. The U.S. grid has 5-10% renewable energy. In Germany we had >20% renewable energy in 2011. Average power was 60GW, but on sunny weekends the installed PV power of 15GW nearly saturated demand. Throttling wind farms to match demand occurs so often it annoys the owners. I am sure this happens in Texas, too.
Norbert
TSLA will win
Then it might make sense in Texas and Germany. Isn't Germany able to throttle down non-renewables?
The situation is really bad in that aspect:
- the 4 oligopolic electricity providers operated their grids on their own. Only in the last years they were forced by EU to outsource that business to independent units. One sold his grid, three formed 100% daughter units.
- German grid has very minor energy storage capacity, mostly pumped storage.
- when there is surplus generation from renewables + conventional power plants, the grid operators first ramp down the peak and medium load ones. This is OK.
- Base load plants that cannot ramp down or only at high cost are brown coal+nuclear. So there is an incentive to throttle down renewables.
- the renewable operators get financial compensation for throttling. The money comes from the renewables budget that is used for Germany's feed-in tariffs.
- this budget is filled by distributing costs among all electricity consumers (with the exemption of highly energy-intensive industry!)
So there is no financial incentive to use renewables as effective as possible. Plus the increased "renewables" budget is used for fear mongering by the oligopolists:
Household retail electricity cost is 20-25 Euro-cent per kWh. Industry consumers pay 5-8 cent. The renewable budget draws 3.5 cent from every kWh sold. They spread FUD that this cost is a) responsible for price increases of the last years (they exceeded 8 cent) and b) will cost us dearly in the years to come.
It is clearly bunk but self-acclaimed "consumer protective" organizations started to investigate...
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To a very good first approximation on the U.S. grid, lowest prices == lowest load. The benefit of tracking prices instead of loads is that, someday, retail customers will pay the actual wholesale price of power (plus a markup to cover distribution costs), rather than the sanitized retail rates.
VolkerP, I agree with your analysis of the current situation, but remember that your nukes are set to shut down, which should open up the dispatch to accept more wind.
The other issue that grid operators have with lots of renewables is the uncontrolled variability on the system. It would help tremendously if the German grid were centrally operated, which would allow tighter coordination of reserves across the entire country. Frankly, there ought not be more than 4 grid operators on the entire continent, but there's no one with sufficient clout to knock the heads together to accomplish that.
The other issue that grid operators have with lots of renewables is the uncontrolled variability on the system. It would help tremendously if the German grid were centrally operated, which would allow tighter coordination of reserves across the entire country. Frankly, there ought not be more than 4 grid operators on the entire continent, but there's no one with sufficient clout to knock the heads together to accomplish that.
rolosrevenge
Dr. EVS
Worse than that, charging when renewable energy is available can have you charging on peak. If people really care about being green, they would set their charging for when the net load (load minus uncontrolled renewables) is low. Sometimes there would be no renewable energy at all being produced at night, but that is when you want to charge, not at peak times just because the wind is blowing.
If you care about carbon you should charge when your grid's carbon content is lowest. There are various tools in the UK to track this. A real time link to my car charger would be nice but at present (would you believe it!) it's lowest carbon when it's lowest load which is also when it's lowest price which is in the middle of the night. So I can just use the car's timer. Which I do.
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