In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus
bob wrote:

On Nov 15, 11:20 pm, Charles Ellson
wrote:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:46:18 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:28:15 +0000
tony sayer wrote:
Now your part: How many TWh does the continent consume? Germany takes
about 600 TWh/year.

Hans-Joachim

And when the wind don't blow the trains won't go .....

Cue some rubbish about solar energy making up for it from the
ecoidiots...

Cur further implied rubbish that coal, oil and nuclear power stations
run all the time.

Go on then, when was the last time that either the UK or Germany was
unable to supply enough power to keep the grid up due to unplanned/
forced outages of coal, oil, nuclear or gas power stations?

Robin

27th May 2008 came pretty close. The sudden loss of 1.5GW of generation
caused load shedding and emergency Demand Control notices to be issued to
DNOs (regional supply networks). In other words, they came pretty close to
turning off the lights over parts of the UK.



Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...
--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer wrote:
In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus
bob wrote:

On Nov 15, 11:20 pm, Charles Ellson
wrote:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:46:18 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:28:15 +0000
tony sayer wrote:
Now your part: How many TWh does the continent consume? Germany
takes about 600 TWh/year.

Hans-Joachim

And when the wind don't blow the trains won't go .....

Cue some rubbish about solar energy making up for it from the
ecoidiots...

Cur further implied rubbish that coal, oil and nuclear power
stations run all the time.

Go on then, when was the last time that either the UK or Germany was
unable to supply enough power to keep the grid up due to unplanned/
forced outages of coal, oil, nuclear or gas power stations?

Robin

27th May 2008 came pretty close. The sudden loss of 1.5GW of
generation caused load shedding and emergency Demand Control notices
to be issued to DNOs (regional supply networks). In other words,
they came pretty close to turning off the lights over parts of the
UK.



Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

I thought gas turbine sets were the preferred standby generators, as being
very quick to start up.
Or have things changed in the last decade or two ?

Jim Hawkins

Jim Hawkins wrote:
tony sayer wrote:
In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus
bob wrote:

On Nov 15, 11:20 pm, Charles Ellson
wrote:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:46:18 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:28:15 +0000
tony sayer wrote:
Now your part: How many TWh does the continent consume? Germany
takes about 600 TWh/year.
Hans-Joachim
And when the wind don't blow the trains won't go .....
Cue some rubbish about solar energy making up for it from the
ecoidiots...
Cur further implied rubbish that coal, oil and nuclear power
stations run all the time.
Go on then, when was the last time that either the UK or Germany was
unable to supply enough power to keep the grid up due to unplanned/
forced outages of coal, oil, nuclear or gas power stations?

Robin
27th May 2008 came pretty close. The sudden loss of 1.5GW of
generation caused load shedding and emergency Demand Control notices
to be issued to DNOs (regional supply networks). In other words,
they came pretty close to turning off the lights over parts of the
UK.


Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

I thought gas turbine sets were the preferred standby generators, as being
very quick to start up.
Or have things changed in the last decade or two ?

no. They take half an hour to really get going: a diesel genny can be up
in a couple of minutes.


Jim Hawkins

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Jim Hawkins wrote:

I thought gas turbine sets were the preferred standby generators, as
being very quick to start up.
Or have things changed in the last decade or two ?

no. They take half an hour to really get going: a diesel genny can be up
in a couple of minutes.

Except, if the system load is high, they would be running them sync-locked
to the grid but at minumum power output - ie hot standby - at least, that's
what the CEGB would have done from what I understand.

The original point being that it seems that we do not have a comfortable
surplus of spare generating capacity thanks to the lack of will to build
nuclear in the last 20 years and this is what happens...

--
Tim Watts

Tim Watts wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Jim Hawkins wrote:

I thought gas turbine sets were the preferred standby generators, as
being very quick to start up.
Or have things changed in the last decade or two ?

no. They take half an hour to really get going: a diesel genny can be up
in a couple of minutes.

Except, if the system load is high, they would be running them sync-locked
to the grid but at minumum power output - ie hot standby - at least, that's
what the CEGB would have done from what I understand.


No, that's spinning reserve. Hot standby is a plant thats up to temp put
not spinning.


The original point being that it seems that we do not have a comfortable
surplus of spare generating capacity thanks to the lack of will to build
nuclear in the last 20 years and this is what happens...

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:22:28 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Jim Hawkins wrote:

I thought gas turbine sets were the preferred standby generators, as being
very quick to start up.
Or have things changed in the last decade or two ?

no. They take half an hour to really get going: a diesel genny can be up
in a couple of minutes.

All the 'CEGB' installed Gas Turbines fitted at coal, oil and nuclear
sites, plus those at standalone sites, were on full load in 2 minutes
from a cold start. Some of the smaller ones took just 90 seconds.
Max size was 35W, min about 14MW.

But despite the name they ran on light fuel oil, not gas


--

Jim Hawkins wrote:


I thought gas turbine sets were the preferred standby generators, as being
very quick to start up.
Or have things changed in the last decade or two ?

That was the general idea, pre-privatisation.

However, the way the Thatcher government sold off the industry made it very
attractive to burn gas like it was going out of fashion.

Insane really...
--
Tim Watts

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:18:13 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

Go on then, when was the last time that either the UK or Germany
was
unable to supply enough power to keep the grid up due to
unplanned/
forced outages of coal, oil, nuclear or gas power stations?

27th May 2008 came pretty close. The sudden loss of 1.5GW of
generation
caused load shedding and emergency Demand Control notices to be
issued
to DNOs (regional supply networks).

In other words, they came pretty close to turning off the lights
over
parts of the UK.

Some parts of the UK did go black as under frequency trips at
substations tripped, mostly in the SE. We had a very noticeable brown
out and short power cut:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allsorts-60/4306495000

Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?

They take time to start, run up to speed, synchronise and finally
start feeding the grid. Same with all other stations, in the meantime
you have more demand than generation, the lights have to go out
somewhere.

--
Cheers
Dave.

tony sayer wrote:
In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus
bob wrote:

On Nov 15, 11:20 pm, Charles Ellson
wrote:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:46:18 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:28:15 +0000
tony sayer wrote:
Now your part: How many TWh does the continent consume? Germany takes
about 600 TWh/year.
Hans-Joachim
And when the wind don't blow the trains won't go .....
Cue some rubbish about solar energy making up for it from the
ecoidiots...
Cur further implied rubbish that coal, oil and nuclear power stations
run all the time.
Go on then, when was the last time that either the UK or Germany was
unable to supply enough power to keep the grid up due to unplanned/
forced outages of coal, oil, nuclear or gas power stations?

Robin
27th May 2008 came pretty close. The sudden loss of 1.5GW of generation
caused load shedding and emergency Demand Control notices to be issued to
DNOs (regional supply networks). In other words, they came pretty close to
turning off the lights over parts of the UK.



Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

IIRC - an if anyone knows beter, says so, because I'd like to know - teh
hirerchy is

Wind. Always take wind because we are required to pay through the nose
when its available.

Hydro and pumped are always in use balancing short term fluctuations.

Interconnects are used to balance with Holland and France..keeps prices
down. In general we take french nulear rather then coal when we can -
chiefly at night.


CCGT is always in use balancing hour by hour fluctuations and generating
about 30-50%.

Coal is used when we need to balancing the daily demand. Uptto 50%
demand at this time of year is met by coal.

OCGT is held in reserve - these are exepsnive but fast start units. I
have seen a hundred MW or so of that.

Oil power stations - these are essentially fuel oil burners, held in
cold reserve, but can be fired up if things look bad, but it probably
takes a day to do it. There in case something bad happens.

At this point they also start phoning up certain companies who get cheap
leccy, saying 'your contract states that in return you wont use it when
we haven't got it: we haven't! '

Next down the line is a raft of small generation kit - like diesel
gennies in phone exchanges and hospitals they an call on for a few
hundred MW in total.

And that really is rock bottom - then its load shed time - rolling blackouts

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
At this point they also start phoning up certain companies who get
cheap leccy, saying 'your contract states that in return you wont use
it when we haven't got it: we haven't! '
I used to work for a firm that used gas on an industrial scale and very
cheap price, I can also remember at least three times when because of
the terms of their contract they had to shut down for a day or two until
there was enough supply to start taking again.
--
Clive

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:20:47 +0000, Clive
wrote:

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
At this point they also start phoning up certain companies who get
cheap leccy, saying 'your contract states that in return you wont use
it when we haven't got it: we haven't! '
I used to work for a firm that used gas on an industrial scale and very
cheap price, I can also remember at least three times when because of
the terms of their contract they had to shut down for a day or two until
there was enough supply to start taking again.

Strange as it may seem but some gas fired power stations are also on
interruptible contracts.

The lights may go out, but at least with the gas supply now secure to
those not on interruptible contract their boilers will keep firing and
the pump will keep circulating to keep their house warm...or not.

Oh look its all gone tits up. We can't keep the lights on, we can't
keep the gas on, some ****wit keeps building sodding wind turbines
everywhere that don't work and roofs are covered in ****ing useless
solar PV.

Maybe we shouldn't have ****ed away all the UK gas, but the blame lies
firmly with Thatcher for privatising the energy sector in the first
place. Short sighted interfering senile bint.

Will someone tell her Dennis is dead again.


--

In message , The Other Mike
writes
On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:20:47 +0000, Clive
wrote:

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
At this point they also start phoning up certain companies who get
cheap leccy, saying 'your contract states that in return you wont use
it when we haven't got it: we haven't! '
I used to work for a firm that used gas on an industrial scale and very
cheap price, I can also remember at least three times when because of
the terms of their contract they had to shut down for a day or two until
there was enough supply to start taking again.

Strange as it may seem but some gas fired power stations are also on
interruptible contracts.

The lights may go out, but at least with the gas supply now secure to
those not on interruptible contract their boilers will keep firing and
the pump will keep circulating to keep their house warm...or not.

Oh look its all gone tits up. We can't keep the lights on, we can't
keep the gas on, some ****wit keeps building sodding wind turbines
everywhere that don't work and roofs are covered in ****ing useless
solar PV.

Maybe we shouldn't have ****ed away all the UK gas, but the blame lies
firmly with Thatcher for privatising the energy sector in the first
place. Short sighted interfering senile bint.

Will someone tell her Dennis is dead again.


We wish ...

--
geoff

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Next down the line is a raft of small generation kit - like diesel
gennies in phone exchanges and hospitals they an call on for a few
hundred MW in total.

The chap that used to do emergency repairs to my machines took a job with a
firm who managed gensets for a large supermarket chain. He said to keep
them in fettle they were regularly started at peak times to backfeed the
grid but this was over 20 years ago.

AJH

tony sayer wrote:

In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus
bob wrote:

On Nov 15, 11:20 pm, Charles Ellson
wrote:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:46:18 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:28:15 +0000
tony sayer wrote:
Now your part: How many TWh does the continent consume? Germany
takes about 600 TWh/year.

Hans-Joachim

And when the wind don't blow the trains won't go .....

Cue some rubbish about solar energy making up for it from the
ecoidiots...

Cur further implied rubbish that coal, oil and nuclear power stations
run all the time.

Go on then, when was the last time that either the UK or Germany was
unable to supply enough power to keep the grid up due to unplanned/
forced outages of coal, oil, nuclear or gas power stations?

Robin

27th May 2008 came pretty close. The sudden loss of 1.5GW of generation
caused load shedding and emergency Demand Control notices to be issued to
DNOs (regional supply networks). In other words, they came pretty close to
turning off the lights over parts of the UK.



Would that actually happen?.

I guess it might. If Nat Grid control were sending "Demand Control
Imminent"[1] messages on the alerts system that feeds to the DNOs (and
everyone else who matters)[2] that is possibly a strong indication of bad
things being about to happen.

I suspect they had enough industrial load voluntery shedding to get back to
the safe zone, but if not - or if there had been a further increas in demand
- this was May, if it had been January that could have been much worse.

[1] My lay understanding of this is it roughly means "Mr DNO, please be
ready to shed some load quickly as you see fit or we will shed it for you" -
perhaps someone more connected might be able to explain timescales etc?

[2] I was reading them - some part of the National Grid website or BMI (I
forget) allowed public reading of the formal alerts. Seems to have
disappeared, ie I can no longer find it, which is not a huge surprise.

I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

Not sure what the max supply and startup times would be?

--
Tim Watts

tony sayer schrieb:


Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

Forget diesel gensets, unless it is a setup like Lichtblick's
"Zuhausekraftwerk",
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/english_information_395.php
allowing to switch on several thousands with one knob.


At the moment, the fastest solution is, to have wind plants on standby,
in an area with a good breeze. Modern wind turbines can bring on 20% of
their power per second.

Second best is hydro, which might react within 10 seconds.

Next one is the gas turbines.



In real-world operation, the grid runs through small deviations simply
by the inertia of the huge generators in nuclear and coal plants. If you
suck more energy, frequency theoretically follows at once, but the mass
of the generators takes care of that for a few seconds, giving time to
react.
If a grid uses a high percentage of renewables instead, you need a
replacement for this. Modern wind turbines can simulate that by
increasing output by 10% for a period of 10 seconds, even beyond rated
power. This must be done automatically. The plant does it within half a
second, an operator can't react fast enough.



Hans-Joachim

Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:
tony sayer schrieb:


Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

Forget diesel gensets, unless it is a setup like Lichtblick's
"Zuhausekraftwerk",
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/english_information_395.php
allowing to switch on several thousands with one knob.


At the moment, the fastest solution is, to have wind plants on standby,
in an area with a good breeze.

don't be silly. If there is no breeze they are useless.

wind turbines are the major part of the problem, not a solution.

In article ,
Hans-Joachim Zierke writes:

tony sayer schrieb:


Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

Forget diesel gensets, unless it is a setup like Lichtblick's
"Zuhausekraftwerk",
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/english_information_395.php
allowing to switch on several thousands with one knob.


At the moment, the fastest solution is, to have wind plants on standby,
in an area with a good breeze. Modern wind turbines can bring on 20% of
their power per second.

Doesn't work in UK.
Wind is so expensive that the only way they can be built is to
guarantee to pay for all their output even when it's not needed,
and their electricity is very expensive anyway. No one will pay
to have them spinning in reserve.

In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,
because people are not willing to pay for keeping it ready to go.
In the days of the CEGB, there was plenty, but their remit was
to provide an extremely reliable supply (it was the most reliable
in the world at the time), not fighting costs against profit and
competition. I am expecting that the reliability of our supply
will drop significantly over the next decade, due to lack of
investment and lack of strategy over the last 2 decades, and
the costs of what we have to rise significantly.
We had to be building nuclear or coal plant 20 years ago to keep
the lights on for the next 10 years, and to be able to afford to
do so.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Andrew Gabriel wrote:

In article ,
Hans-Joachim Zierke writes:

tony sayer schrieb:


Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...

Forget diesel gensets, unless it is a setup like Lichtblick's
"Zuhausekraftwerk",
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/english_information_395.php
allowing to switch on several thousands with one knob.


At the moment, the fastest solution is, to have wind plants on standby,
in an area with a good breeze. Modern wind turbines can bring on 20% of
their power per second.

Doesn't work in UK.
Wind is so expensive that the only way they can be built is to
guarantee to pay for all their output even when it's not needed,
and their electricity is very expensive anyway. No one will pay
to have them spinning in reserve.

In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,
because people are not willing to pay for keeping it ready to go.
In the days of the CEGB, there was plenty, but their remit was
to provide an extremely reliable supply (it was the most reliable
in the world at the time), not fighting costs against profit and
competition. I am expecting that the reliability of our supply
will drop significantly over the next decade, due to lack of
investment and lack of strategy over the last 2 decades, and
the costs of what we have to rise significantly.
We had to be building nuclear or coal plant 20 years ago to keep
the lights on for the next 10 years, and to be able to afford to
do so.


Yes. I remember a mate who worked for the CEGB, and now for Nat Grid saying
that after the sell off, they had more computing power devoted to trading
with the generators than they did for running the grid, inclduing demand
prediction.

Effectively ****ing money and time away in keeping an artifical construct
alive instead of doing what they were actually supposed to be doing.

--
Tim Watts

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Hans-Joachim Zierke writes:
tony sayer schrieb:


Would that actually happen?. I thought there were quite a few Diesel
gensets of some capacity all over the UK that could be called upon if
need be?. Not that you'd need to as they are IIRC quite expensive to
run...
Forget diesel gensets, unless it is a setup like Lichtblick's
"Zuhausekraftwerk",
http://www.lichtblick.de/h/english_information_395.php
allowing to switch on several thousands with one knob.


At the moment, the fastest solution is, to have wind plants on standby,
in an area with a good breeze. Modern wind turbines can bring on 20% of
their power per second.

Doesn't work in UK.

Doesnt work in Germany either :-)

Wind is so expensive that the only way they can be built is to
guarantee to pay for all their output even when it's not needed,
and their electricity is very expensive anyway. No one will pay
to have them spinning in reserve.

In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,
because people are not willing to pay for keeping it ready to go.
In the days of the CEGB, there was plenty, but their remit was
to provide an extremely reliable supply (it was the most reliable
in the world at the time), not fighting costs against profit and
competition. I am expecting that the reliability of our supply
will drop significantly over the next decade, due to lack of
investment and lack of strategy over the last 2 decades, and
the costs of what we have to rise significantly.
We had to be building nuclear or coal plant 20 years ago to keep
the lights on for the next 10 years, and to be able to afford to
do so.

Yup.

In message , Andrew Gabriel
writes
In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,
because people are not willing to pay for keeping it ready to go.
In the days of the CEGB, there was plenty, but their remit was
to provide an extremely reliable supply (it was the most reliable
in the world at the time), not fighting costs against profit and
competition. I am expecting that the reliability of our supply
will drop significantly over the next decade, due to lack of
investment and lack of strategy over the last 2 decades, and
the costs of what we have to rise significantly.
We had to be building nuclear or coal plant 20 years ago to keep
the lights on for the next 10 years, and to be able to afford to
do so.
During the miners strike in 83? Maggie had a lot of installed diesel
generator sets to keep the lights on so that she didn't have to bow to
pressure from the miners. I remember at the time it was recommended
that her decision was made out of bloody-mindedness and would cost every
person in the country another 1.5p per day on their electricity bills
for the rest of their lives.
--
Clive

In message , Huge
writes
On 2011-11-19, Clive wrote:
During the miners strike in 83? Maggie had a lot of installed diesel
generator sets to keep the lights on so that she didn't have to bow to
pressure from the miners. I remember at the time it was recommended
that her decision was made out of bloody-mindedness and would cost every
person in the country another 1.5p per day on their electricity bills
for the rest of their lives.
All sounds most unlikely.
You either don't remember Maggie, or you are a Tory.
--
Clive

On Nov 19, 2:09*pm, Clive wrote:
In message , Huge
writesOn 2011-11-19, Clive wrote:
During the miners strike in 83? Maggie had a lot of installed diesel
generator sets to keep the lights on so that she didn't have to bow to
pressure from the miners. * I remember at the time it was recommended
that her decision was made out of bloody-mindedness and would cost every
person in the country another 1.5p per day on their electricity bills
for the rest of their lives.
All sounds most unlikely.

You either don't remember Maggie, or you are a Tory.

Link?
Sounds like fiction.
Diesel sets are tiny compared with turbines.

On 19/11/2011 13:47, Huge wrote:
On 2011-11-19, wrote:

During the miners strike in 83? Maggie had a lot of installed diesel
generator sets to keep the lights on so that she didn't have to bow to
pressure from the miners. I remember at the time it was recommended
that her decision was made out of bloody-mindedness and would cost every
person in the country another 1.5p per day on their electricity bills
for the rest of their lives.

All sounds most unlikely.


Especially as the main plan was to build up massive reserves of coal at
the power stations before encouraging Scargill to commit Sepuku on the
behalf off the unions.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

In uk.railway Graeme Wall twisted the electrons to say:
Especially as the main plan was to build up massive reserves of coal at
the power stations before encouraging Scargill to commit Sepuku on the
behalf off the unions.

nods Though according to the encyclopedia of a thousand lies, the oil
fired power station at Inverkip got to run at full power instead of being
~2/3rds mothalled.
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

On Nov 19, 2:43*pm, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 19/11/2011 13:47, Huge wrote:

On 2011-11-19, *wrote:

During the miners strike in 83? Maggie had a lot of installed diesel
generator sets to keep the lights on so that she didn't have to bow to
pressure from the miners. * I remember at the time it was recommended
that her decision was made out of bloody-mindedness and would cost every
person in the country another 1.5p per day on their electricity bills
for the rest of their lives.

All sounds most unlikely.

Especially as the main plan was to build up massive reserves of coal at
the power stations before encouraging Scargill to commit Sepuku on the
behalf off the unions.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

Heh Heh. I remember that. They removed coal from the non visible part
of the piles to promote despair among the strikers.

On Nov 19, 3:43*pm, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 19/11/2011 13:47, Huge wrote:

On 2011-11-19, *wrote:

During the miners strike in 83? Maggie had a lot of installed diesel
generator sets to keep the lights on so that she didn't have to bow to
pressure from the miners. * I remember at the time it was recommended
that her decision was made out of bloody-mindedness and would cost every
person in the country another 1.5p per day on their electricity bills
for the rest of their lives.

All sounds most unlikely.

Especially as the main plan was to build up massive reserves of coal at
the power stations before encouraging Scargill to commit Sepuku on the
behalf off the unions.

My understanding was that agreements from previous miners' strikes
effectively forced the CEGB to buy more coal than they needed in order
to protect miners' jobs. The result was that the miners' unions built
up the massive reserves of coal at the power stations themselves.

Robin

Andrew Gabriel schrieb:


Doesn't work in UK.
Wind is so expensive that the only way they can be built is to
guarantee to pay for all their output even when it's not needed,
and their electricity is very expensive anyway. No one will pay
to have them spinning in reserve.

Same in Germany, at this moment.

But prices come down more and more. In the beginning, we paid 3 times as
much for wind energy as with current installations. Likewise, the
percentage provided by wind energy grows and grows, which means, that
wind energy must contribute its share to network stabilization in future.
Requirements for network friendlyness and network services were already
tightened.


In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,

This used to be generous in Germany, but of course, we can't switch off
7 nukes and still have a generous reserve.

If we want to have all that renewable energy, two things are important:

1) We must punish (by the price) a major difference in efficiency for
fully loaded versus partly loaded solar panels. Now that the solar
panels are able to flatten the noon peak, the interesting question is
not the maximum output, but the minimum output with an overcast sky.
Some modules provide a much lower efficiency when partly loaded, and
we have to price those out of the market, by giving them less subsidy.

2) The wind plants must get higher, out of the ground effects. This is
less important on a windy day, but on a day like yesterday, tips at
200m would have given us ... no perfect supply, far from that, but at
least, several GW more.


Hans-Joachim

On 19/11/2011 14:56, Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:
Andrew Gabriel schrieb:

2) The wind plants must get higher, out of the ground effects. This is
less important on a windy day, but on a day like yesterday, tips at
200m would have given us ... no perfect supply, far from that, but at
least, several GW more.


Germany must be an awfully ugly country for you not to mind covering it
with 200m high industrial plant. I've not been there recently.

Another Dave

Another Dave wrote:
On 19/11/2011 14:56, Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:
Andrew Gabriel schrieb:

2) The wind plants must get higher, out of the ground effects. This is
less important on a windy day, but on a day like yesterday, tips at
200m would have given us ... no perfect supply, far from that, but at
least, several GW more.


Germany must be an awfully ugly country for you not to mind covering it
with 200m high industrial plant. I've not been there recently.

Typical scene there. On the motorway from Aachen to Cologne, there are
couple of dozen wind turbines on the ridge on the South side of the
road, being driven by a *large* coal fired station on the North side.

The first service area you reach on that road coming into Germany has a
wind turbine on site that, for some reason, no longer has a display
showing the statistics for it. Although, whenever I checked the display
when it was there, it always showed a minimal or zero output. Which was
backed up by a total lack of stuff spinning round up above. The service
area building does, however, have a turf roof for Winter insulation and
Summer cooling.

Or you can go to the Black Forest, and admire the lines of wind turbines
along many of the ridges there.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Another Dave wrote:
On 19/11/2011 14:56, Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:
Andrew Gabriel schrieb:

2) The wind plants must get higher, out of the ground effects. This is
less important on a windy day, but on a day like yesterday, tips at
200m would have given us ... no perfect supply, far from that, but at
least, several GW more.


Germany must be an awfully ugly country for you not to mind covering it
with 200m high industrial plant. I've not been there recently.

1/. It is awfully ugly. "A country ruined by subsidy"
2/. Nor has anyone else. See above.

Another Dave

On 19/11/2011 16:19, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:

http://www.ruhl-online.de/05-Gegenwi...stein_1820.jpg


God help you!

No amount of nuclear power can be worse than that.

Another Dave

Wolfgang Schwanke schrieb:


http://www.ruhl-online.de/05-Gegenwi...stein_1820.jpg

Good example.

1/3 the number, but 7.5 MW plants would give the same installed power,
but a lot better harvest, especially on days with low wind speed like
yesterday.


Hans-Joachim

Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
Another Dave wrote in
:

On 19/11/2011 14:56, Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:
Andrew Gabriel schrieb:

2) The wind plants must get higher, out of the ground effects. This
is
less important on a windy day, but on a day like yesterday, tips
at 200m would have given us ... no perfect supply, far from that,
but at least, several GW more.

Germany must be an awfully ugly country for you not to mind covering
it with 200m high industrial plant. I've not been there recently.

http://www.ruhl-online.de/05-Gegenwi...stein_1820.jpg

A monument to government stupidity, green naivete and Siemens corporate
greed..

On Nov 19, 4:19*pm, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
Another Dave wrote :

On 19/11/2011 14:56, Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:
Andrew Gabriel schrieb:

2) The wind plants must get higher, out of the ground effects. This
is
* * less important on a windy day, but on a day like yesterday, tips
* * at 200m would have given us ... no perfect supply, far from that,
* * but at least, several GW more.

Germany must be an awfully ugly country for you not to mind covering
it with 200m high industrial plant. I've not been there recently.

http://www.ruhl-online.de/05-Gegenwi...stein_1820.jpg

Strewth!!!!
Is that lot privately/individually owned?
They all seem to be random sizes and placing.

In message , Wolfgang Schwanke
writes
Another Dave wrote in
:

On 19/11/2011 14:56, Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote:
Andrew Gabriel schrieb:

2) The wind plants must get higher, out of the ground effects. This
is
less important on a windy day, but on a day like yesterday, tips
at 200m would have given us ... no perfect supply, far from that,
but at least, several GW more.


Germany must be an awfully ugly country for you not to mind covering
it with 200m high industrial plant. I've not been there recently.

http://www.ruhl-online.de/05-Gegenwi...stein_1820.jpg

All ready to march on poland



--
geoff

Germany must be an awfully ugly country for you not to mind covering
it with 200m high industrial plant. I've not been there recently.

http://www.ruhl-online.de/05-Gegenwi...stein_1820.jpg

Ugly *now*, Manuel.

Yes, very ugly. :-(


--
Cheers
Roger Traviss


Photos of the late HO scale GER: -

http://www.greateasternrailway.com

For more photos not in the above album and kitbashes etc..:-
http://s94.photobucket.com/albums/l9...Great_Eastern/

(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
Doesn't work in UK.
Wind is so expensive that the only way they can be built is to
guarantee to pay for all their output even when it's not needed,
and their electricity is very expensive anyway. No one will pay
to have them spinning in reserve.


It's about as bonkers as bonkers gets. All because the Blair
government wanted to be seen as leaders in Europe, completely
regardless of cost.


In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,
because people are not willing to pay for keeping it ready to go.
In the days of the CEGB, there was plenty, but their remit was
to provide an extremely reliable supply (it was the most reliable
in the world at the time), not fighting costs against profit and
competition. I am expecting that the reliability of our supply
will drop significantly over the next decade, due to lack of
investment and lack of strategy over the last 2 decades, and
the costs of what we have to rise significantly.


The CEGB also did a pretty good job of keeping prices low.

On Nov 19, 8:11*pm, Bruce wrote:
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
Doesn't work in UK.
Wind is so expensive that the only way they can be built is to
guarantee to pay for all their output even when it's not needed,
and their electricity is very expensive anyway. No one will pay
to have them spinning in reserve.

It's about as bonkers as bonkers gets. *All because the Blair
government wanted to be seen as leaders in Europe, completely
regardless of cost.

In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,
because people are not willing to pay for keeping it ready to go.
In the days of the CEGB, there was plenty, but their remit was
to provide an extremely reliable supply (it was the most reliable
in the world at the time), not fighting costs against profit and
competition. I am expecting that the reliability of our supply
will drop significantly over the next decade, due to lack of
investment and lack of strategy over the last 2 decades, and
the costs of what we have to rise significantly.

The CEGB also did a pretty good job of keeping prices low.

The taxpayer was subsidising them. And colal was much cheaper then.
It was subsidised too.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article
,
harry wrote:

On Nov 19, 8:11*pm, Bruce wrote:
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
Doesn't work in UK.
Wind is so expensive that the only way they can be built is to
guarantee to pay for all their output even when it's not needed,
and their electricity is very expensive anyway. No one will pay
to have them spinning in reserve.

It's about as bonkers as bonkers gets. *All because the Blair
government wanted to be seen as leaders in Europe, completely
regardless of cost.

In the UK, we have rather little emergency reserve capacity,
because people are not willing to pay for keeping it ready to go.
In the days of the CEGB, there was plenty, but their remit was
to provide an extremely reliable supply (it was the most reliable
in the world at the time), not fighting costs against profit and
competition. I am expecting that the reliability of our supply
will drop significantly over the next decade, due to lack of
investment and lack of strategy over the last 2 decades, and
the costs of what we have to rise significantly.

The CEGB also did a pretty good job of keeping prices low.

The taxpayer was subsidising them. And colal was much cheaper then.
It was subsidised too.

That didn't make the coal cheaper. It just meant the taxpayers paid more
for that also.


After the demise of the nationalised British Coal, all the cheap deals
for imported coal quickly evaporated and the average price paid for
coal delivered to the power station reverted in a matter of months to
something strangely close what British Coal had been charging.

A cynic might conclude that the low prices offered on the import
market in the dying years of British Coal were short term measures,
primarily intended to hasten the demise of that nationalised company.

On 18 Nov 2011 19:18:26 GMT, Hans-Joachim Zierke
wrote:

At the moment, the fastest solution is, to have wind plants on standby,
in an area with a good breeze. Modern wind turbines can bring on 20% of
their power per second.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI1nPd7hezM#t=23s


--