On 12/18/2013 11:51 PM, Malcom "Mal" Reynolds wrote:
In article m,
"EXT" wrote:

"Irreverent Maximus" wrote in message
...
On 12/18/2013 12:47 PM, EXT wrote:

Did you know that during Earth Hour, when everyone is encouraged to turn
off the lights for one hour, the electric companies pay industry to use
up the power. This is because you cannot shut down a nuclear plant for
one hour, nor stop a hydro dam or even shut down a coal powered
generator plant. Instead of saving money it costs us all extra to not
use the lights for one hour.


This is not true. Power plants can throttle down the output, directly,
and bring offline necessary units in running standby, or stopped
standby, mode.

Look up "droop mode vs isochronous" via search engine.

Depending on what is going on, and how the plant is operated, switching
all units (maybe minus one) into droop will have the power plant
reacting to load conditions. Many power plants have automatic controls
for such circumstances. Others might have operators that will make
the decision. Shutting the plant down is not necessary.


Perhaps in theory, but Ontario Hydro the electric generator for Ontario,
Canada, was scrambling to cover the drop in consumption during the last
earth day according to reports.

one would assume that turning the spigot down on the hydro plants would
have the effect of throttling the output and saving the water for later
high demands...of course if OH is no longer using hydropower, they'd
have to have other management tools

not to mention that if they can't schedule production based on what they
knew would be a known drop in consumption, they need to offshore their
management


I've heard of water being pumped back up hill for energy storage. Of
course that energy was probably from another source that could not
conserve it or cost more to throttle back.