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German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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. |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 :) -- |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
In message , Tim
Streater writes In article , 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. Except apparently right now, when there seems to be little wind anywhere. The Jetstream is down around Madeira! regards -- Tim Lamb |
German energy policy
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... |
German energy policy
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. |
German energy policy
Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
Hans-Joachim Zierke wrote in . com: 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. The only reasonable application of a electricity generator in the home is to make oneself independent from the power grid if it becomes unreliable due to mismanagment, or too expensive due to "green" regulation. So far we never needed to expect such a thing, but times are changeing. As a strategy for the national grid it's back to the pre industrial age. A large number of small units must be far more expensive to run than a single large unit producing the same amount of power. In a world where economic efficiency and the general good are the main goals of decisionmaking, it would never be done. But we're not in such a world any more, mad ideologies have taken over. "Lichtblick" is an electric company that advertises itself as "green". No wonder it's them who'd come up with such a stupid concept. +1 Greens today are a bit like Court astrologers or soothsayers of the 13th century. |
German energy policy
Wolfgang Schwanke schrieb: The only reasonable application of a electricity generator in the home is to make oneself independent from the power grid if it becomes unreliable due to mismanagment, or too expensive due to "green" regulation. The VW 2.0l is far too big for a single family home, and in this configuration, the device is not capable of feeding electricity to anything else but the grid. As a strategy for the national grid it's back to the pre industrial age. A large number of small units must be far more expensive to run than a single large unit producing the same amount of power. You have misunderstood something: These devices are not able to provide baseload. They switch off after heating up the water reservoir, just like any other gas burner for house heating does. Hans-Joachim |
German energy policy
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] |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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. |
German energy policy
On Nov 18, 4:18*pm, 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... In normal operation, the grid will have a number of power stations on base load (generally coal and nuclear) and a number of GT combined cycle plants on part load, operating flexibly to manage the minute to minute fluctuation in demand. In addition there will be a number of plant (both big steam and CCGT) in "spinning reserve", meaning they are running at idle, synched to the grid but not actually supplying power. After that there are the "hot standby" plant, basically GTs that are turned on but not synched, and steam plant with steam in the boilers, ready to go, but not actually connected to the grid. On top of that there will be open cycle GT peaker plant of various sizes. The larger peaker plant (of the 100MW-200MW size) can be started from cold in about 20 minutes or from warm in about 15. Smaller GTs can start faster, but obviously have a lower output. Ditto diesel generators. Then there is also wind and solar that supplies as much as it can (and its fluctuation is balanced by the CCGTs). There is also the pumped storage that will only be called in when there is a large demand spike or loss of generating capacity as it doesn't last very long, but can start in seconds. Generally, taking the spare capacity in CCGTs and the spinning reserve, there is enough generating capacity that can be called on if the largest power station on the grid trips (Sizewell B), at which point the hot standby becomes the new spinning reserve and other plant is brought up to become the new hot standby. In the day in question, Sizewell B tripped, so the above happened. Unfortunately 5 minutes later another large station tripped (I believe another nuclear plant). This left a shortfall that would likely be in the region of 600 MW. When the power supplied to the grid is less than that drawn out of it, the spinning bits lose energy, so the frequency drops. Nominally it's at 50 HZ, but anything between 49.5 and 50.5 Hz is tolerable. When the frequency starts to drop the first thing that happens is that every plant online will be activated in something called "frequency response mode", which is basically a posh way of saying "throw the kitchen sink at it". Basically every station is ramped up as fast as it can be to as high an output as is possible (including exceeding normal temperature limits and things like that), in the hope that this will keep things going until new plant can come online. No doubt whatever pumped storage was available would also be thrown into the mix. A slight hiccup occurred as the frequency dropped to about 47 Hz, namely that all the wind and solar generation triped because it was "under speed". At this point, action is taken to allow load shedding to begin (though in the event it didn't happen). This is where the events of this particular occasion were turned around (new capacity came online and restored balance). Were that not to have taken place, then load shedding would begin. Hopefully that could be done in a suitable controlled manner to match the demand to the available capacity, so that order could be restored. Basically sacrifice supply to some parts so that the whole can be saved. Robin |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
In message
, bob writes Then there is also wind and solar that supplies as much as it can (and its fluctuation is balanced by the CCGTs). There is also the pumped storage that will only be called in when there is a large demand spike or loss of generating capacity as it doesn't last very long, but can start in seconds. As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. -- Clive |
German energy policy
In message , at 13:51:10 on Sat,
19 Nov 2011, Clive remarked: There is also the pumped storage that will only be called in when there is a large demand spike or loss of generating capacity as it doesn't last very long, but can start in seconds. As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. I presume the CEGB can afford a TV set these days and watch it for themselves. ps. The warning for advert breaks is a little chequerboard in the top RHS of the frame. -- Roland Perry |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 13:51:10 on Sat, 19 Nov 2011, Clive remarked: There is also the pumped storage that will only be called in when there is a large demand spike or loss of generating capacity as it doesn't last very long, but can start in seconds. As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. I presume the CEGB can afford a TV set these days and watch it for themselves. ps. The warning for advert breaks is a little chequerboard in the top RHS of the frame. Does any one station get enough viewers now? Back in the days of three or (gasp) four TV channels, there were many millions watching Corrie or Morecambe and Wise. Also, are the ad breaks on all the channels synchronised enough now to generate a peak in usage? -- Tciao for Now! John. |
German energy policy
In message , at 14:22:23 on Sat, 19 Nov
2011, John Williamson remarked: ps. The warning for advert breaks is a little chequerboard in the top RHS of the frame. Does any one station get enough viewers now? Back in the days of three or (gasp) four TV channels, there were many millions watching Corrie or Morecambe and Wise. Coronation St gets between six and eleven million viewers, which is much the same as the 70's. They got more in the late 80's and early 90's (between twelve and twenty million). Also, are the ad breaks on all the channels synchronised enough now to generate a peak in usage? I doubt they are synchronised at all, either accidentally or deliberately. Other than most channels (including the BBC) transmitting dross between approximately xx.58.00 and xx.59.59. -- Roland Perry |
German energy policy
On 19/11/2011 13:51, Clive wrote:
In message , bob writes Then there is also wind and solar that supplies as much as it can (and its fluctuation is balanced by the CCGTs). There is also the pumped storage that will only be called in when there is a large demand spike or loss of generating capacity as it doesn't last very long, but can start in seconds. As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. The CEGB would have used the cue dots that ITV used to cue the different advert breaks round the network, it wasn't a special service just for them. Used to be a black and white pattern in the top left corner of the screen that was normally outside the viewing area on a domestic TV. These days the principle is the same but the cue is not on the visible picture but buried in one of the associated data tracks. -- Graeme Wall This account not read, substitute trains for rail. Railway Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail |
German energy policy
On 19/11/2011 14:22, John Williamson wrote:
Roland Perry wrote: In message , at 13:51:10 on Sat, 19 Nov 2011, Clive remarked: There is also the pumped storage that will only be called in when there is a large demand spike or loss of generating capacity as it doesn't last very long, but can start in seconds. As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. I presume the CEGB can afford a TV set these days and watch it for themselves. ps. The warning for advert breaks is a little chequerboard in the top RHS of the frame. Does any one station get enough viewers now? Back in the days of three or (gasp) four TV channels, there were many millions watching Corrie or Morecambe and Wise. Also, are the ad breaks on all the channels synchronised enough now to generate a peak in usage? The main soaps still generate enough of a peak for the generators. There is no deliberate synchronisation of adverts over different channels. -- Graeme Wall This account not read, substitute trains for rail. Railway Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
On 19/11/2011 14:31, Roland Perry wrote:
I doubt they are synchronised at all, either accidentally or deliberately. Other than most channels (including the BBC) transmitting dross between approximately xx.58.00 and xx.59.59. These days it is dross between xx.00.00 and xx.59.59. -- Graeme Wall This account not read, substitute trains for rail. Railway Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail |
German energy policy
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 |
German energy policy
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 ... |
German energy policy
In uk.railway Clive twisted the electrons to say:
As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. According to this video I found on YouTube some time ago, not only do they have information forom the TV networks as to when things like Eastenders and Corrie are meant to finish they also take the logical step of having a TV running in the control room so they know when it actually finishes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTM2Ck6XWHg -- These opinions might not even be mine ... Let alone connected with my employer ... |
German energy policy
On 19/11/11 14:06, Roland Perry wrote:
ps. The warning for advert breaks is a little chequerboard in the top RHS of the frame. Which is not their for viewers, but to allow local ITV stations to get their adverts cued up and ready to go. Ian |
German energy policy
On 19/11/2011 15:08, Alistair Gunn wrote:
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. Oil, of course, was not subject to picketing and using it extended the availability of the stock-piled coal. -- Graeme Wall This account not read, substitute trains for rail. Railway Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail |
German energy policy
On 19/11/2011 15:10, Alistair Gunn wrote:
In uk.railway Clive twisted the electrons to say: As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. According to this video I found on YouTube some time ago, not only do they have information forom the TV networks as to when things like Eastenders and Corrie are meant to finish they also take the logical step of having a TV running in the control room so they know when it actually finishes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTM2Ck6XWHg They need the TV to see the cue-dots. -- Graeme Wall This account not read, substitute trains for rail. Railway Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail |
German energy policy
In article ,
John Williamson wrote: Roland Perry wrote: In message , at 13:51:10 on Sat, 19 Nov 2011, Clive remarked: There is also the pumped storage that will only be called in when there is a large demand spike or loss of generating capacity as it doesn't last very long, but can start in seconds. As in the adverts half way through Corrie when everyone puts the kettle on at once. I believe the CEGB used to be counted down by ITV for the last 60s seconds before the adverts to be precise with their timing though what happens now, I've no idea. I presume the CEGB can afford a TV set these days and watch it for themselves. ps. The warning for advert breaks is a little chequerboard in the top RHS of the frame. Does any one station get enough viewers now? Back in the days of three or (gasp) four TV channels, there were many millions watching Corrie or Morecambe and Wise. Miss World was another 'loader'. The Duty Engineer at TvC had a phone on the LEB's PABX to keep them up-to-date. -- From KT24 Using a RISC OS computer running v5.16 |
German energy policy
In message , at 15:22:14 on Sat, 19 Nov
2011, The Real Doctor remarked: ps. The warning for advert breaks is a little chequerboard in the top RHS of the frame. Which is not their for viewers, but to allow local ITV stations to get their adverts cued up and ready to go. I was suggesting it could be used by the CEGB. Unless they count as one of your "viewers". -- Roland Perry |
German energy policy
In message , at 14:38:43 on Sat, 19
Nov 2011, Graeme Wall remarked: These days the principle is the same but the cue is not on the visible picture but buried in one of the associated data tracks. It's still visible - I used it while skipping the adverts on a recording of "I'm a Celebrity GMOOH" yesterday evening! -- Roland Perry |
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