So. Here it is. Bloody cold. Severe frost last night. Skies were so clear
you could see right across the galaxy ... My mate has just rung me to say
that he has just driven past the forest of windmills up the road, and not a
single one is turning. So I had a look at Gridwatch, and the demand is high.
And what is wind contributing ? - less than 1%. Under 500kW. And what is it
that they keep telling us ? The wind is always blowing somewhere ? Well
today, I guess that's a very light breeze somewhere in remotest Scotland,
then.

Gridwatch should be required viewing for every numpty politician and
scientist that honestly believes that backing this nonsense and destroying
our fossil capability, is going to leave us anything other than without any
power at all ... :-\

Arfa

If they are serious about wind and tidal and wave etc, they need to invest
in a form of efficient energy storage. After all y you could not run your
car without a battery, at least not very well, and yet they seem to think
that a country can be run that way.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...
So. Here it is. Bloody cold. Severe frost last night. Skies were so clear
you could see right across the galaxy ... My mate has just rung me to say
that he has just driven past the forest of windmills up the road, and not
a single one is turning. So I had a look at Gridwatch, and the demand is
high. And what is wind contributing ? - less than 1%. Under 500kW. And
what is it that they keep telling us ? The wind is always blowing
somewhere ? Well today, I guess that's a very light breeze somewhere in
remotest Scotland, then.

Gridwatch should be required viewing for every numpty politician and
scientist that honestly believes that backing this nonsense and destroying
our fossil capability, is going to leave us anything other than without
any power at all ... :-\

Arfa

In article ,
Brian Gaff wrote:
If they are serious about wind and tidal and wave etc, they need to
invest in a form of efficient energy storage. After all y you could not
run your car without a battery, at least not very well, and yet they
seem to think that a country can be run that way.

While we run a generating system mainly based on fossil fuels, any
contribution from renewables reduces the demand on those conventional
power stations and reduces the fuel they use overall.

--
*Virtual reality is its own reward*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 21/01/14 14:22, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Brian Gaff wrote:
If they are serious about wind and tidal and wave etc, they need to
invest in a form of efficient energy storage. After all y you could not
run your car without a battery, at least not very well, and yet they
seem to think that a country can be run that way.

While we run a generating system mainly based on fossil fuels, any
contribution from renewables reduces the demand on those conventional
power stations and reduces the fuel they use overall.

a myth.

Its a bit like saying that carrying a mast and sail on your car will
reduce overall fuel consumption.

Sometimes it will. Often it will raise the fuel consumption dragging
all that clutter around.

In short the requirement to overall generate less electricity is offset
by the extra amounts of fuel needed to start up and heat up gas turbines
repeatedly, all of which is lost when they switch off.

I have a contact with a gas turbine company reseraching this: His
conclusion after analysing 3 years of wind data and electricity
generated by wind, is that with the older style turbines the addition of
wind power almost certainly results in *increased* fuel burn.

Of course, being a man trying to sell fast start turbines into the
industry, he would say that, but he is selling to pretty intelligent
engineers.

I usually summarise this by saying that in terms of saving fuel, wind
turbines are (almost) completely useless.


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
While we run a generating system mainly based on fossil fuels, any
contribution from renewables reduces the demand on those conventional
power stations and reduces the fuel they use overall.

a myth.

Its a bit like saying that carrying a mast and sail on your car will
reduce overall fuel consumption.

Sometimes it will. Often it will raise the fuel consumption dragging
all that clutter around.

In short the requirement to overall generate less electricity is offset
by the extra amounts of fuel needed to start up and heat up gas turbines
repeatedly, all of which is lost when they switch off.

I have a contact with a gas turbine company reseraching this: His
conclusion after analysing 3 years of wind data and electricity
generated by wind, is that with the older style turbines the addition of
wind power almost certainly results in *increased* fuel burn.

Of course, being a man trying to sell fast start turbines into the
industry, he would say that, but he is selling to pretty intelligent
engineers.

I usually summarise this by saying that in terms of saving fuel, wind
turbines are (almost) completely useless.

Sounds like they need to do some research into the efficiency of gas
turbines too then if they really do waste such an incredible amount of
energy.

I don't know much about such heavy generating plant - but thought that gas
turbines were used as an 'instant' solution to peak demand? Where a coal
fired one can't react quickly enough?

--
*A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 22/01/14 13:33, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
While we run a generating system mainly based on fossil fuels, any
contribution from renewables reduces the demand on those conventional
power stations and reduces the fuel they use overall.

a myth.

Its a bit like saying that carrying a mast and sail on your car will
reduce overall fuel consumption.

Sometimes it will. Often it will raise the fuel consumption dragging
all that clutter around.

In short the requirement to overall generate less electricity is offset
by the extra amounts of fuel needed to start up and heat up gas turbines
repeatedly, all of which is lost when they switch off.

I have a contact with a gas turbine company reseraching this: His
conclusion after analysing 3 years of wind data and electricity
generated by wind, is that with the older style turbines the addition of
wind power almost certainly results in *increased* fuel burn.

Of course, being a man trying to sell fast start turbines into the
industry, he would say that, but he is selling to pretty intelligent
engineers.

I usually summarise this by saying that in terms of saving fuel, wind
turbines are (almost) completely useless.

Sounds like they need to do some research into the efficiency of gas
turbines too then if they really do waste such an incredible amount of
energy.


There is work being done, and it helps BUT you cant get away from the
fact that efficiency is not constant with load, and that getting a big
set up to temperature uses energy that is totally lost every time you
switch it off.

In generally that happens once a day at the moment with most gas sets as
its uneconomic to run them overnight into the market price of
electricity that pertains at that time.

Adding wind to that increases the number of stop start cycles to several
a day, and forces a lot more CCGT to be on-line at part load - still
suffering the same parasitic thermal losses from the plant - in order
to be available for instant ramp up should the wind unexpectedly be less
than it was forecast.

AND if you look at the data on BMreports you will see that the errors
between forecast and out-turn are often out by several GW in a big wind
situation. There are two reasons for that. First is the nature of the
wind-speed/power curve, which is square law, so slight errors in
forecasting make big differences in out-turn. Secondly, at a given
windspeed operators will shut down farms to prevent turbine damage, and
this happens suddenly and without warning.

To pass off these deficiences in wind generation as a problem with gas
turbine designs is typical of the sanctimonious buck passing attitude of
renewable energy aficionados, who see the rest of the grid and
generating capacity as there t server their interest alone, and not
those of the consumers or the nation at large.

IN short their, and your attitude appears to be, "If my technology makes
a problem for your technology, that's not my problem, its yours".

And when the gas operators say 'well, **** you then, I am closing
efficient plant and not building more, because it's making my operations
unprofitable, as I can't get decent efficiency from my otherwise decent
gas turbines" you will no doubt spin that into 'deliberate
underinvestment and gouging by power companies".

Frankly, I am sick of the renewable movement disguising its pathetic
inability to supply anything anyone want or needs into a burden to be
placed onto the shoulders of others to sort out.




I don't know much about such heavy generating plant - but thought that gas
turbines were used as an 'instant' solution to peak demand? Where a coal
fired one can't react quickly enough?


neither true. Gas turbines take at least 45 minutes to reach full power
if they are combined cycle, and 15-20 minutes if open cycle.

Coal plant is able to be throttled back and because its so inefficient
anyway, losing most of its energy as waste heat of one sort or another,
it can respond pretty quickly - even to short term demands due to there
being a lot of energy in a boiler full of steam you can tap temporarily.

Fast small fluctuations are handled by the pumped storage, and hydro gas
will respond in tens of minutes, and coal in - for BIG changes, a matter
of an hour or so provided the plant is up and running at all. AS can
nuclear.

The reasons for the way things do respond are more economic than technical.

Short term shortfalls mean higher prices and its worthwhile spinning up
gas for that, or dumping hydro.

Even if it wastes gas. Because maintenance on gas plants is less than on
coal - they have lower fixed costs, so they are happy to sit idle and
only fire up occasionally IF the price they can get justifies the poor
efficiency they are getting.

The Hughes report showed exactly how this would all pan out with
subsidised renewables driving efficient clean baseload gas off the grid
and it being replaced with inefficient open cycle and diesel STOR sets
that are cheap to build, but massively inefficient to run, but make
economic sense if they don't run very much at all, and then into
extremely expensive electricity shortfall periods.. The fact that they
are massively emitting CO2 in comparison to a CCGT running baseload,
doesn't bother the renewable crowd. They are not there to reduce CO2,
but to make a guaranteed subsidised profit, after all.




--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 21/01/14 13:04, Brian Gaff wrote:
If they are serious about wind and tidal and wave etc, they need to invest
in a form of efficient energy storage.


Cat belling.

If we knew of an efficient cheap safe small way to store energy we would
already have deployed it en masse to cope with existing grid demand
fluctuations, let alone those additional fluctuations imposed by
intermittent renewable energy..

It just so happens that the best way to store energy is coal (for powers
stations) hydrocarbon fuel (for mobile applications) or in the atomic
nucleus.

Nothing mechanical, chemical, electrical or heat based can rival these
for simplicity, weight, safety and size.


After all y you could not run your
car without a battery, at least not very well, and yet they seem to think
that a country can be run that way.

They hope that they can keep the myth of renewable energy alive long
enough to make obscene amounts of money out of it before it gets thrown
out by any nation that has the sense to realise what a total crock of
**** it all is.

Brian



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 13:13:18 +0000, Arfa Daily wrote:

So. Here it is. Bloody cold. Severe frost last night. Skies were so
clear you could see right across the galaxy ... My mate has just rung
me to say that he has just driven past the forest of windmills up the
road, and not a single one is turning. So I had a look at Gridwatch, and
the demand is high.
And what is wind contributing ? - less than 1%. Under 500kW. And what is
it that they keep telling us ? The wind is always blowing somewhere ?
Well today, I guess that's a very light breeze somewhere in remotest
Scotland, then.

Gridwatch should be required viewing for every numpty politician and
scientist that honestly believes that backing this nonsense and
destroying our fossil capability, is going to leave us anything other
than without any power at all ... :-\

I posted a link to gridwatch on Facebook yesterday. One of my colleagues
was mightlity upset, saying "you'll be complaining about solar power on a
dull day next"....!



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