OK - so it was in a comment... :-)



"One shutdown you didn't mention was Dungeness B about a year ago which
was shut down by the St Jude's day storm. I remember seeing the
electricity supply from pumped storage suddenly peak on the excellent
gridwatch site.

As you say, renewable energy is actually more reliable than conventional
power plants in this respect - but we do still need to make progress on
grid-scale storage and a more diverse renewable energy base (tidal and
wave need to be added to wind and solar) to completely replace fossil fuels.

We are making progress. Wind produced more electricity than nuclear for
almost all of last weekend."

http://www.theguardian.com/environme...rgy-powered-on

--
Rod

On 20/10/2014 21:03, polygonum wrote:
OK - so it was in a comment... :-)



"One shutdown you didn't mention was Dungeness B about a year ago which
was shut down by the St Jude's day storm. I remember seeing the
electricity supply from pumped storage suddenly peak on the excellent
gridwatch site.

snip

We are making progress. Wind produced more electricity than nuclear for
almost all of last weekend."

snip more

The guy doesn't get it. Losing Didcot B is an argument that
intermittency doesn't matter? Or that conventional stations are jsut as bad?

He's right, wind can be forecast days ahead. I forecast that tomorrow
the installed wind plant will all be shut down, due to a common cause. I
equally forecast that the installed nuclear plant will not all be shut
down due to a common cause - because there isn't one.

Andy

On 20/10/2014 21:21, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 20/10/2014 21:03, polygonum wrote:
OK - so it was in a comment... :-)



"One shutdown you didn't mention was Dungeness B about a year ago which
was shut down by the St Jude's day storm. I remember seeing the
electricity supply from pumped storage suddenly peak on the excellent
gridwatch site.

snip

We are making progress. Wind produced more electricity than nuclear for
almost all of last weekend."

snip more

The guy doesn't get it. Losing Didcot B is an argument that
intermittency doesn't matter? Or that conventional stations are jsut as
bad?

He's right, wind can be forecast days ahead. I forecast that tomorrow
the installed wind plant will all be shut down, due to a common cause. I
equally forecast that the installed nuclear plant will not all be shut
down due to a common cause - because there isn't one.

Andy

Agreed. It was the irony of that which decided me to post here!

--
Rod

PING TNP:

Here's an idea for Gridwatch - I have no idea if it is even feasible...

Is there any automatic feed of declared capacity by generator in
realtime? And if so, could the dials show it?

On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 08:15:58 +0100
Chris Hogg wrote:

On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 21:21:53 +0100, Vir Campestris
wrote:

He's right, wind can be forecast days ahead. I forecast that
tomorrow the installed wind plant will all be shut down, due to a
common cause.

chuckle
And in fact wind didn't shut down due to the gale and actually
generated more electricity than nuclear (latter only running at
half-cock ATM), which underlines just how unpredictable wind-generated
electricity is!


Here in North Suffolk, the so-called 'gale' was a joke, just a mild
blow. No wonder the local Eye Airfield eyesores kept spinning and
producing, there was nothing to disturb them.

--
Davey.

In message , Chris Hogg
writes
On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:10:09 +0100, Davey
wrote:

On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 08:15:58 +0100
Chris Hogg wrote:

On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 21:21:53 +0100, Vir Campestris
wrote:

He's right, wind can be forecast days ahead. I forecast that
tomorrow the installed wind plant will all be shut down, due to a
common cause.

chuckle
And in fact wind didn't shut down due to the gale and actually
generated more electricity than nuclear (latter only running at
half-cock ATM), which underlines just how unpredictable wind-generated
electricity is!


Here in North Suffolk, the so-called 'gale' was a joke, just a mild
blow. No wonder the local Eye Airfield eyesores kept spinning and
producing, there was nothing to disturb them.

Breezy down here in Cornwall, but no more than that, and less so than
a week or ten days ago.

I am firmly of the view that since the 1987 hurricane and the Fish
debacle, the Met Office has been deliberately exaggerating gales so
that it will never again be guilty of under-estimating their strength.
That in itself makes for difficulties in predicting the output from
wind farms.

I'm not sure it's not also partly the media not really being very clear-
I read the met office warning, and it mentioned northern england and
scotland etc. I don't think they were expecting, nor forecast anything
beyond windy down south (Cambidgeshire for us)
--
Chris French

On 22/10/2014 11:26, Chris Hogg wrote:
I am firmly of the view that since the 1987 hurricane and the Fish
debacle, the Met Office has been deliberately exaggerating gales so
that it will never again be guilty of under-estimating their strength.
That in itself makes for difficulties in predicting the output from
wind farms.

The charts I saw seemed to estimate the gusts about 10% down on the
actual figures. Though I'm comparing the forecast from Windguru for
Grafham Water

http://www.windguru.cz/int/index.php?spotcislo=77
might work for you, subject to cookies

Against the Cambridge Uni Comp Sci lab

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/weather/

which is nearly 20 miles away.


I'm still surprised we didn't see them shut down!

Andy

On 20/10/2014 21:03, polygonum wrote:
OK - so it was in a comment... :-)



"One shutdown you didn't mention was Dungeness B about a year ago which
was shut down by the St Jude's day storm. I remember seeing the
electricity supply from pumped storage suddenly peak on the excellent
gridwatch site.

As you say, renewable energy is actually more reliable than conventional
power plants in this respect - but we do still need to make progress on
grid-scale storage and a more diverse renewable energy base (tidal and
wave need to be added to wind and solar) to completely replace fossil
fuels.

We are making progress. Wind produced more electricity than nuclear for
almost all of last weekend."

http://www.theguardian.com/environme...rgy-powered-on


Never trust a bloke called Damian.

On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 21:03:32 +0100, polygonum wrote:

We are making progress. Wind produced more electricity than nuclear for
almost all of last weekend."

Context required:

It was rather windy - wind at its peak - 5 1/2 ish GW.

About half the nuke capacity was offline, 4 1/2 ish GW is the lowest
I've seen nuke generation for a long time.

Even today with wind flat out coal and CCGT are meeting 62% of
demand.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 21/10/2014 12:48, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 21:03:32 +0100, polygonum wrote:

We are making progress. Wind produced more electricity than nuclear for
almost all of last weekend."

Context required:

It was rather windy - wind at its peak - 5 1/2 ish GW.

About half the nuke capacity was offline, 4 1/2 ish GW is the lowest
I've seen nuke generation for a long time.

I'm out of touch now, but this time of year they are sometimes fettling
it for the really cold weather. Some of the outages are unplanner of course.


Even today with wind flat out coal and CCGT are meeting 62% of
demand.