The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation.
The resilience of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal outdoor dunny) at each house.
Yea, let's kill more linemen with all this silent power that sure as I'm sitting here SOMEBODY will wire wrong and won't disconnect the grid side when the power goes down and back feed the power lines with enough voltage to kill the guys trying to fix your power. Nothing says I love what you do for me like killing somebody.
Actually, I don't think this helps anybody but possibly the home owner, who would be just as well off with a fossil fueled backup generator on the premises. They are pretty cheap, fairly easy to install and they sell them at Home Depot and Lowes with installation included.
I think if you read my initial post....
You will find that I advocated that we use fossil fueled options for the backup power option and this killing linemen thing was more of a minor point and pretty much a sarcastic point.
Generators do kill linemen, battery based backup power sources would too, but the kicker here is that fossil fueled backup generator will cost an order of magnitude less and are readily available from the big box stores. THAT was my "actual" point.
Do what you want with your money. However, for me, IF I figured that my local utility provider wasn't reliable enough and I wanted to have a backup generator to cover their outages, I'm heading to the local home improvement store and buying that standby generator with installation for 1/10th of the cost of a battery/inverter setup and getting a device that will out last the alternative by decades.
I think you need a dictionary.. Offensive weapons are designed for attack. ICBM's are the epitome of an offensive weapon, nuclear versions more so. Why do you need to launch a nuclear device 9,000 miles away to defend yourself? Now if we where discussing mortar shells or something a whole lot shorter range you *might* have had a point, but we are discussing nuclear tipped ICBM's...
The main threat to NK sits within shelling range of the DMZ. They don't need these missiles to defend themselves if attacked, they need artillery and an effective air force to control the sky. Where I think they have the fist, they cannot afford the second. Their empty rice pots are cooked (normally I'd say Goose but they don't have any food) and they know it. The ICBM isn't going to change anything really, but it might kill a pile of people in the USA if they are crazy enough to use it.
Personally, I don't think we should give them the chance to use it.... But hey, you can feel free to advocate we take that chance.
Are you not paying attention? NK's nukes exist and they are conducting extensive ICBM testing... Are you saying they cannot put a nuke on their ICBM and lob it towards the USA? REALLY? It's OBVIOUS that the NK's idea is to put a nuke on an ICBM and that they are working towards that goal, if they haven't already achieved the necessary ability. And you are calling their Nukes only defensive?
You are nuts if you truly don't think the DPRK isn't trying to have an offensive nuclear capability and are at least really close to having a nuclear armed ICBM if they don't already have it.
NYT, politifact and Washington post articles? Nope.. You won't accept my Fox News reference for similar reasons...
Facts don't depend on whether you like who brings them to your attention.
Yea, but the articles being referenced where highly selective in their choice of facts and come from obviously partisan editorial view points. You know you'd make the partisan claim if I quoted an opinion piece from Fox.
Then you refuse to pick just ONE of the lies you think Trump is guilty of....What's wrong? Do you not have a specific example or you realize that you cannot defend it? I'm seeing a pattern here.. A very partisan pattern. Make an outlandish claim about your opponent, repeat it often and eventually some will believe your lie.
I've seen enough wiring not to code to know that no matter what the law says, idiots who don't know any better and are too cheap to hire a professional will try and end up doing incredibly dangerous things.
Frequency stability of the Electrical grid is serious business and if you don't have enough generation capacity to handle the existing load, for what ever reason, the rotating machinery will slow down and the frequency drops on the grid. This is BAD, BAD, BAD, because when the frequency drops, all sorts of really bad things start happening to the control systems.
Grid operators have generation schedules for a reason. They forecast the expected load and schedule generation capacity for that and an additional safety margin to cover for unexpected eventualities like some generation plant that trips offline, a transmission line failure and other things. This safety margin MUST be maintained and if a grid operator sees that the available margin is too low, they start working on reducing load and adding capacity until they have sufficient margin. You can reduce voltages, start rotating blackouts and ask large retail customers to reduce consumption, but you NEVER let the frequency drift out of spec, EVER. If you do, you can lose the whole grid, and THAT is a huge time consuming mess to fix as it can take literally days to bring up the grid should it ever go down.
So this WAS a huge problem for the operator. And shows me that they didn't have enough capacity online to maintain sufficient safety margins and should have had more on the schedule. They came perilously close to a really big costly mess and *somebody* needs to be investigating why this happened and how the procedures in place allowed it and what needs to be changed to prevent this kind of thing in the future. Heads should roll. It was THAT bad...
1. Yeah, the dossier got blown way out of proportion (in no small part thanks to Trump's inability to let things go.. it probably would have been forgotten about early on if he and his supporters didn't keep bringing it up.) My only point though was that while the dems may have ran with it, they weren't the ones who initiated it.
But... The problem here is how the dossier was used -- BY THE FBI This is a serious problem given the previous administration was from the "other" party and this dossier was seemingly used to justify a whole bunch of investigative activities. IF it can be established that the DNC or HRC's campaign shared this with the FBI on purpose, then anything the FBI investigated based on this document is tainted as a partisan political effort. IF this theory is true, it's going to make Watergate look like a failed fraternity prank.
2. I don't recall HRC claiming that Trump didn't win. She might not like it, and she might question why the electoral college is allowed to override the popular vote, but Trump got castigated because he was planning to not even concede the election should he lose. That's a whole different level.
Sure sounds like she was protesting the results to me. She's certainly implying that the Russians had something to do with this too. Are you getting the picture yet? This Russian thing was from HRC's campaign and the DNC.... It's important to realize this fact. Now add the dossier which they paid for.. Connecting the dots is easy from that point.
3. Being careful and being perfect are not the same thing. Muller is not magic and he can only work with the information he has at the time, and then adjust when new information comes to light. By all accounts, that's exactly what he did. Blaming him for not knowing something that was (at the time) unknowable is not really a great argument.
You said that Mueller was being careful about appearances. I'm saying that I don't think he was. I don't think he really cares what it looks like and where he could have at least attempted to avoid the appearance of bias in his team by including a token republican or two, he didn't. In fact, he had some uber-biased team members who arguably where not objective, who where involved in the Clinton E-mail investigation and letting her skate but now where busting down doors at dawn to serve search warrants in their investigation of Trump. Something smells in all this, but Mueller doesn't care about how it appears.
4. I'm not saying those articles are wrong. I'm just saying that the investigation may involve more than just interviews at the White House. There may be interviews to be done outside the White House. There may be evidence to collect and analyze that isn't in the form of interviews, and at the very least there's a report to write in order to present the findings.
The articles are true. They are quoting a lawyer. The question is if the lawyer is able to speak to the truth and if it's true what does it mean?
All I'm saying is this... IF this is true, that the interviews at the White House are done, then Mueller is likely done with the investigative part of his work. The process here is that you investigate and establish the facts as best you can before you interview the targets of your investigation. You don't start asking the target questions unless you have exhausted all other avenues of establishing the facts because it tips your hand and gives your target information about the investigation and what you know or don't know when you start asking questions.
So, indications are that IF this lawyer's statement is factual, it seems likely
Is this a real thing? It seems pretty unlikely. First, you'd have to somehow manage to get around electrical codes and inspection. Then your little home PV unit would have to take up some significant part of the whole load of your neighbourhood. Then the linemen would have to be bad enough at their jobs that they didn't check the line before grabbing hold if it.
It's the home handyman type that often does their own work, to heck with codes, inspections or paying a licensed electrician that I worry about. I'm not a licensed electrician but I know enough to make a system like this work. I also understand that doing this is illegal... But there are a pile of people who think watching a UTUBE video makes them an expert.
Linemen have a lot to worry about in their dangerous business and are usually working long hard hours rushing to get your power back. They often are far from home, living out of motels and sleep deprived. Mistakes happen, people die.
Problem here is you don't know where the line is disconnected and how much of the neighborhood is actually attached. SO.. If your idea of providing battery power is to ride out the blackout for a time you will need an inverter capable of running off grid and some crazy handyman will have wired up his inverter without the legally required switches and push enough power back onto the grid to kill somebody.
Linemen actually ARE killed this way on a regular basis with fossil fueled generators,,which are easy to hear from a distance and offer some kind of warning to the linemen. A totally quite battery system will only kill more of them because there will be no warning..
Well, the crazy sounding guy is pointing the weapon at you and yelling he's going to pull the trigger... Do you really think you are going to just stand there and find out for sure if he's bluffing or will you defend yourself? Tis your call..
But the crazy guy is pointing the weapon at you yelling he's going to shoot you sir... Are you going to sit there and wait for him to pull the trigger?
"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. period." I liked my plan, but I couldn't keep it because it was illegal under the new law and the one I got now is more expensive, higher deductible and higher out of pocket...
LOL.. You mean a rolling blackout in the middle of summer? Yea, Musk kept a few thousand homes with the lights on for 20 seconds or so for how many millions of dollars? I guess that's progress...
Exactly.. The grid operator failed to keep adequate reserves on line so the frequency dropped. This should NEVER happen except in dire emergency situations where some seriously damaging event has either isolated part of the grid or more than one generator has gone offline.
So this tells me that they need to start building power plants FAST, because what they have doesn't seem to be doing the job.
Came on line? I assure you the backup was ALREADY on line, steam in the boiler with the generator turning in sync with the mains.
What it wasn't doing is pushing out power. Somebody or something has to advance the throttle to make that happen and apparently that takes about 6 seconds.
Dang sir.. You have *some* ideas here which are correct, but others which are totally brain dead.
Your average large power plant is a steam turbine affair. It doesn't matter what fuel you use to generate the steam all that much as the operation of the power generation side is pretty much the same between natural gas, nuclear, coal etc.
So.. If you are a power plant pushing out a steady amount of power, there is a bit of energy stored in the system that can be used to temporally throttle up to push more. There is the rotational inertia that will resist the frequency from changing should the grid be trying to drag it slower which will INSTANTLY cause you to put out more power.... In the short term you can then open the throttle on the steam supply and drive your synchronous machine further forward to push more power, drawing on the steam already in the boiler and the mass of water already heated there. As the steam pressure drops, more water will boil, releasing energy to be collected by the turbine and turned into electrical power output. As the boiler pressure drops you can, for most heat supplies, speed up the creation of heat by burning fuel at a faster rate (exception would be nuclear, but only sometimes). However, usually, the grid is provisioned with MORE capacity than is instantly necessary for stability reasons. You simply MUST keep a minimum operating margin between supply and demand or the whole thing comes down in a bad way.
There are limits to all these energy reserves at a power station, but in a fully operating station they can push considerably more power than scheduled for quite a long time before they have to make drastic changes.
Now.. What you CANNOT do is take a steam based power station from a cold start very quickly. It takes time to get the fires started, the steam pressure up and everything hot enough to properly run. This can take hours, or days depending on the size and design of the plant. However, if it's already running, throttling up to cover a short term load issue isn't that much of a problem to do quickly.
Synchronous generation is what they use (induction type) and the machines turn at exactly the same speed all the time.
What determines the amount of power you are pushing is two fold. First you adjust the field current to control the voltage being put out... Second you "push" power by opening the throttle on whatever is driving the rotor which will advance the rotor's phase angle, but the system will not turn faster, but will run in sync with the grid. If you want power FROM the grid, you retard the phase angle which will draw power from the grid to keep the rotor in sync. Though all this, the field current is adjusted for voltage as it regulates the strength of the moving magnetic field from the rotor/
You can drive or draw too much power, in which case the machine will fall out of sync with the grid and the currents and forces this generates can be quite destructive both electrically and mechanically to the grid and machine.
If a power source goes offline, wouldn't you see a slump in voltage? Why the decrease in frequency?
The Frequency slows because AC power is, at it's core, generated by rotating machines.
If you draw more power out of a rotating machine than you put in, it slows down. You slow down an electrical generator, the output frequency drops.
What they DON'T tell you in this article is what the REAL problem was here, that of having less backup capacity already online to take up the slack when their coal plant tripped offline. This tells me that something was really wrong, Electrical supplies where really short and they where not taking appropriate steps to mitigate demand. You NEVER get into this situation with an electrical grid unless you are doing something wrong.
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation.
The resilience of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal outdoor dunny) at each house.
Yea, let's kill more linemen with all this silent power that sure as I'm sitting here SOMEBODY will wire wrong and won't disconnect the grid side when the power goes down and back feed the power lines with enough voltage to kill the guys trying to fix your power. Nothing says I love what you do for me like killing somebody.
Actually, I don't think this helps anybody but possibly the home owner, who would be just as well off with a fossil fueled backup generator on the premises. They are pretty cheap, fairly easy to install and they sell them at Home Depot and Lowes with installation included.
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation. These could act like your home UPS, fixing blackouts of a few minutes, when they occur. This also would make the grid much more able to use wind and solar sources, without so much need for standby diesel systems currently in place.
Yea, great idea... now we just need to come up with money to pay for the equipment and maintain it. (snark off)
For Pete's sake... The electric grid in the USA is pretty dammed reliable where it needs to be. If you want to have a battery UPS for your house, be my guest and pay for it your self (Here's a hint: Attach a bunch of solar cells to charge the batteries, it's great).
If you require better reliability than you are getting now, contact your utility provider and work out an SLA with them. Of course they will charge you more for this service. Usually, though, it's going to be cheaper and easier to just toss in a backup generator to carry your essential load during the blackouts and provide UPS power for the stuff that simply CANNOT stand the 30 seconds it takes to switch over...
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The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation.
The resilience of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal outdoor dunny) at each house.
Yea, let's kill more linemen with all this silent power that sure as I'm sitting here SOMEBODY will wire wrong and won't disconnect the grid side when the power goes down and back feed the power lines with enough voltage to kill the guys trying to fix your power. Nothing says I love what you do for me like killing somebody.
Actually, I don't think this helps anybody but possibly the home owner, who would be just as well off with a fossil fueled backup generator on the premises. They are pretty cheap, fairly easy to install and they sell them at Home Depot and Lowes with installation included.
I think if you read my initial post....
You will find that I advocated that we use fossil fueled options for the backup power option and this killing linemen thing was more of a minor point and pretty much a sarcastic point.
Generators do kill linemen, battery based backup power sources would too, but the kicker here is that fossil fueled backup generator will cost an order of magnitude less and are readily available from the big box stores. THAT was my "actual" point.
Do what you want with your money. However, for me, IF I figured that my local utility provider wasn't reliable enough and I wanted to have a backup generator to cover their outages, I'm heading to the local home improvement store and buying that standby generator with installation for 1/10th of the cost of a battery/inverter setup and getting a device that will out last the alternative by decades.
I think you need a dictionary.. Offensive weapons are designed for attack. ICBM's are the epitome of an offensive weapon, nuclear versions more so. Why do you need to launch a nuclear device 9,000 miles away to defend yourself? Now if we where discussing mortar shells or something a whole lot shorter range you *might* have had a point, but we are discussing nuclear tipped ICBM's...
The main threat to NK sits within shelling range of the DMZ. They don't need these missiles to defend themselves if attacked, they need artillery and an effective air force to control the sky. Where I think they have the fist, they cannot afford the second. Their empty rice pots are cooked (normally I'd say Goose but they don't have any food) and they know it. The ICBM isn't going to change anything really, but it might kill a pile of people in the USA if they are crazy enough to use it.
Personally, I don't think we should give them the chance to use it.... But hey, you can feel free to advocate we take that chance.
Obviously not offensive?
Are you not paying attention? NK's nukes exist and they are conducting extensive ICBM testing... Are you saying they cannot put a nuke on their ICBM and lob it towards the USA? REALLY? It's OBVIOUS that the NK's idea is to put a nuke on an ICBM and that they are working towards that goal, if they haven't already achieved the necessary ability. And you are calling their Nukes only defensive?
You are nuts if you truly don't think the DPRK isn't trying to have an offensive nuclear capability and are at least really close to having a nuclear armed ICBM if they don't already have it.
Oh they can bid, they just cannot win... Just like ACORN can apply for grants, but won't be given any.
NYT, politifact and Washington post articles? Nope.. You won't accept my Fox News reference for similar reasons...
Facts don't depend on whether you like who brings them to your attention.
Yea, but the articles being referenced where highly selective in their choice of facts and come from obviously partisan editorial view points. You know you'd make the partisan claim if I quoted an opinion piece from Fox.
Then you refuse to pick just ONE of the lies you think Trump is guilty of....What's wrong? Do you not have a specific example or you realize that you cannot defend it? I'm seeing a pattern here.. A very partisan pattern. Make an outlandish claim about your opponent, repeat it often and eventually some will believe your lie.
I still think you are being silly..
I've seen enough wiring not to code to know that no matter what the law says, idiots who don't know any better and are too cheap to hire a professional will try and end up doing incredibly dangerous things.
So shall we continue for another round of..
Nope, you are wrong!
Nope, *you* are wrong!
Naw, I'm done here myself..
Frequency stability of the Electrical grid is serious business and if you don't have enough generation capacity to handle the existing load, for what ever reason, the rotating machinery will slow down and the frequency drops on the grid. This is BAD, BAD, BAD, because when the frequency drops, all sorts of really bad things start happening to the control systems.
Grid operators have generation schedules for a reason. They forecast the expected load and schedule generation capacity for that and an additional safety margin to cover for unexpected eventualities like some generation plant that trips offline, a transmission line failure and other things. This safety margin MUST be maintained and if a grid operator sees that the available margin is too low, they start working on reducing load and adding capacity until they have sufficient margin. You can reduce voltages, start rotating blackouts and ask large retail customers to reduce consumption, but you NEVER let the frequency drift out of spec, EVER. If you do, you can lose the whole grid, and THAT is a huge time consuming mess to fix as it can take literally days to bring up the grid should it ever go down.
So this WAS a huge problem for the operator. And shows me that they didn't have enough capacity online to maintain sufficient safety margins and should have had more on the schedule. They came perilously close to a really big costly mess and *somebody* needs to be investigating why this happened and how the procedures in place allowed it and what needs to be changed to prevent this kind of thing in the future. Heads should roll. It was THAT bad...
1. Yeah, the dossier got blown way out of proportion (in no small part thanks to Trump's inability to let things go.. it probably would have been forgotten about early on if he and his supporters didn't keep bringing it up.) My only point though was that while the dems may have ran with it, they weren't the ones who initiated it.
But... The problem here is how the dossier was used -- BY THE FBI This is a serious problem given the previous administration was from the "other" party and this dossier was seemingly used to justify a whole bunch of investigative activities. IF it can be established that the DNC or HRC's campaign shared this with the FBI on purpose, then anything the FBI investigated based on this document is tainted as a partisan political effort. IF this theory is true, it's going to make Watergate look like a failed fraternity prank.
2. I don't recall HRC claiming that Trump didn't win. She might not like it, and she might question why the electoral college is allowed to override the popular vote, but Trump got castigated because he was planning to not even concede the election should he lose. That's a whole different level.
Really? OK, OK, not exactly but she did say the following, recently: http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
Sure sounds like she was protesting the results to me. She's certainly implying that the Russians had something to do with this too. Are you getting the picture yet? This Russian thing was from HRC's campaign and the DNC.... It's important to realize this fact. Now add the dossier which they paid for.. Connecting the dots is easy from that point.
3. Being careful and being perfect are not the same thing. Muller is not magic and he can only work with the information he has at the time, and then adjust when new information comes to light. By all accounts, that's exactly what he did. Blaming him for not knowing something that was (at the time) unknowable is not really a great argument.
You said that Mueller was being careful about appearances. I'm saying that I don't think he was. I don't think he really cares what it looks like and where he could have at least attempted to avoid the appearance of bias in his team by including a token republican or two, he didn't. In fact, he had some uber-biased team members who arguably where not objective, who where involved in the Clinton E-mail investigation and letting her skate but now where busting down doors at dawn to serve search warrants in their investigation of Trump. Something smells in all this, but Mueller doesn't care about how it appears.
4. I'm not saying those articles are wrong. I'm just saying that the investigation may involve more than just interviews at the White House. There may be interviews to be done outside the White House. There may be evidence to collect and analyze that isn't in the form of interviews, and at the very least there's a report to write in order to present the findings.
The articles are true. They are quoting a lawyer. The question is if the lawyer is able to speak to the truth and if it's true what does it mean?
All I'm saying is this... IF this is true, that the interviews at the White House are done, then Mueller is likely done with the investigative part of his work. The process here is that you investigate and establish the facts as best you can before you interview the targets of your investigation. You don't start asking the target questions unless you have exhausted all other avenues of establishing the facts because it tips your hand and gives your target information about the investigation and what you know or don't know when you start asking questions.
So, indications are that IF this lawyer's statement is factual, it seems likely
Is this a real thing? It seems pretty unlikely. First, you'd have to somehow manage to get around electrical codes and inspection. Then your little home PV unit would have to take up some significant part of the whole load of your neighbourhood. Then the linemen would have to be bad enough at their jobs that they didn't check the line before grabbing hold if it.
It's the home handyman type that often does their own work, to heck with codes, inspections or paying a licensed electrician that I worry about. I'm not a licensed electrician but I know enough to make a system like this work. I also understand that doing this is illegal... But there are a pile of people who think watching a UTUBE video makes them an expert.
Linemen have a lot to worry about in their dangerous business and are usually working long hard hours rushing to get your power back. They often are far from home, living out of motels and sleep deprived. Mistakes happen, people die.
You don't think the home handyman type won't try this with a battery/inverter setup? Silly you...
Problem here is you don't know where the line is disconnected and how much of the neighborhood is actually attached. SO.. If your idea of providing battery power is to ride out the blackout for a time you will need an inverter capable of running off grid and some crazy handyman will have wired up his inverter without the legally required switches and push enough power back onto the grid to kill somebody.
Linemen actually ARE killed this way on a regular basis with fossil fueled generators, ,which are easy to hear from a distance and offer some kind of warning to the linemen. A totally quite battery system will only kill more of them because there will be no warning..
Well, the crazy sounding guy is pointing the weapon at you and yelling he's going to pull the trigger... Do you really think you are going to just stand there and find out for sure if he's bluffing or will you defend yourself? Tis your call..
But the crazy guy is pointing the weapon at you yelling he's going to shoot you sir... Are you going to sit there and wait for him to pull the trigger?
And we'd not have to discuss "electron holes" when describing how semi-conductors work too... Yea, I cursed Ben in EE class...
"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. period." I liked my plan, but I couldn't keep it because it was illegal under the new law and the one I got now is more expensive, higher deductible and higher out of pocket...
LOL.. You mean a rolling blackout in the middle of summer? Yea, Musk kept a few thousand homes with the lights on for 20 seconds or so for how many millions of dollars? I guess that's progress...
Exactly.. The grid operator failed to keep adequate reserves on line so the frequency dropped. This should NEVER happen except in dire emergency situations where some seriously damaging event has either isolated part of the grid or more than one generator has gone offline.
So this tells me that they need to start building power plants FAST, because what they have doesn't seem to be doing the job.
Came on line? I assure you the backup was ALREADY on line, steam in the boiler with the generator turning in sync with the mains.
What it wasn't doing is pushing out power. Somebody or something has to advance the throttle to make that happen and apparently that takes about 6 seconds.
Dang sir.. You have *some* ideas here which are correct, but others which are totally brain dead.
Your average large power plant is a steam turbine affair. It doesn't matter what fuel you use to generate the steam all that much as the operation of the power generation side is pretty much the same between natural gas, nuclear, coal etc.
So.. If you are a power plant pushing out a steady amount of power, there is a bit of energy stored in the system that can be used to temporally throttle up to push more. There is the rotational inertia that will resist the frequency from changing should the grid be trying to drag it slower which will INSTANTLY cause you to put out more power.... In the short term you can then open the throttle on the steam supply and drive your synchronous machine further forward to push more power, drawing on the steam already in the boiler and the mass of water already heated there. As the steam pressure drops, more water will boil, releasing energy to be collected by the turbine and turned into electrical power output. As the boiler pressure drops you can, for most heat supplies, speed up the creation of heat by burning fuel at a faster rate (exception would be nuclear, but only sometimes). However, usually, the grid is provisioned with MORE capacity than is instantly necessary for stability reasons. You simply MUST keep a minimum operating margin between supply and demand or the whole thing comes down in a bad way.
There are limits to all these energy reserves at a power station, but in a fully operating station they can push considerably more power than scheduled for quite a long time before they have to make drastic changes.
Now.. What you CANNOT do is take a steam based power station from a cold start very quickly. It takes time to get the fires started, the steam pressure up and everything hot enough to properly run. This can take hours, or days depending on the size and design of the plant. However, if it's already running, throttling up to cover a short term load issue isn't that much of a problem to do quickly.
No, no, no, no..
Synchronous generation is what they use (induction type) and the machines turn at exactly the same speed all the time.
What determines the amount of power you are pushing is two fold. First you adjust the field current to control the voltage being put out... Second you "push" power by opening the throttle on whatever is driving the rotor which will advance the rotor's phase angle, but the system will not turn faster, but will run in sync with the grid. If you want power FROM the grid, you retard the phase angle which will draw power from the grid to keep the rotor in sync. Though all this, the field current is adjusted for voltage as it regulates the strength of the moving magnetic field from the rotor/
You can drive or draw too much power, in which case the machine will fall out of sync with the grid and the currents and forces this generates can be quite destructive both electrically and mechanically to the grid and machine.
If a power source goes offline, wouldn't you see a slump in voltage? Why the decrease in frequency?
The Frequency slows because AC power is, at it's core, generated by rotating machines.
If you draw more power out of a rotating machine than you put in, it slows down. You slow down an electrical generator, the output frequency drops.
What they DON'T tell you in this article is what the REAL problem was here, that of having less backup capacity already online to take up the slack when their coal plant tripped offline. This tells me that something was really wrong, Electrical supplies where really short and they where not taking appropriate steps to mitigate demand. You NEVER get into this situation with an electrical grid unless you are doing something wrong.
But we all know he will.... (Miss the deadline that is.. )
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation.
The resilience of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal outdoor dunny) at each house.
Yea, let's kill more linemen with all this silent power that sure as I'm sitting here SOMEBODY will wire wrong and won't disconnect the grid side when the power goes down and back feed the power lines with enough voltage to kill the guys trying to fix your power. Nothing says I love what you do for me like killing somebody.
Actually, I don't think this helps anybody but possibly the home owner, who would be just as well off with a fossil fueled backup generator on the premises. They are pretty cheap, fairly easy to install and they sell them at Home Depot and Lowes with installation included.
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation. These could act like your home UPS, fixing blackouts of a few minutes, when they occur. This also would make the grid much more able to use wind and solar sources, without so much need for standby diesel systems currently in place.
Yea, great idea... now we just need to come up with money to pay for the equipment and maintain it. (snark off)
For Pete's sake... The electric grid in the USA is pretty dammed reliable where it needs to be. If you want to have a battery UPS for your house, be my guest and pay for it your self (Here's a hint: Attach a bunch of solar cells to charge the batteries, it's great).
If you require better reliability than you are getting now, contact your utility provider and work out an SLA with them. Of course they will charge you more for this service. Usually, though, it's going to be cheaper and easier to just toss in a backup generator to carry your essential load during the blackouts and provide UPS power for the stuff that simply CANNOT stand the 30 seconds it takes to switch over...
No.. It was Ben Franklin's fault... He picked the wrong side to be positive, not knowing that electrons flowed the other way.