Not surprising considering what's happening with Wind Farms. They are pretty unreliable compared to the old technology used in coal fire plants, nuclear, and hydro plants built 40 years or more ago.

So much for those being green. I wonder where they will bury all of that material.

 

Not surprising considering what's happening with Wind Farms. They are pretty unreliable compared to the old technology used in coal fire plants, nuclear, and hydro plants built 40 years or more ago.

Got any data supporting that? Or is that just something your feelings tell you? Because it's 100% BS.

I worked in the power industry for years, nothing reliable about coal nuke or hydro, they are constantly being worked on and maintained. Coal plants EAT material handling equipment. Esp high sulfur coal. Ever been in a 40 year old power plant? I have. It's scary.

I remember the last time we had a long outage due to the unreliability of renewable resources, it was awful. Oh, wait a minute, it's NEVER happened. I guess I don't remember it.

 

American Experiment has its axes to grind. That said, you should see the vast fields of obsolete or worn-out turbine blades lying stacked in the sun here, waiting to be recycled if they ever are.

 

Take a picture, should be easy.

 

Small scale nuclear seems to be the only real answer going forward. France has a proven model.

 

I am excited about this. I heard an interesting piece about it on NPR the other day. It seems like "Nuclear" was a swear word when I was a kid, but the article made it sound very promising.

 

What about the big outage in Texas a couple years ago? Ice buildup stopped wind turbine blades and shaded solar panels, major outage for days in sub-freezing temps.....

That and about 28k MW of natural gas and coal power plants due to freezing temps.
What happened in Texas was a systemic failure of the utilities and ERCOT to protect their infrastructure from extremely cold temps.
Wind turbines can be built and designed to deal with freezing temps just like other sources.
Just look at the northern tier states that run just fine in below zero temps. Or Norway that has giant deep sea floating turbines. Which ironically enough provide power for their oil platforms.

 

I remember the last time we had a long outage due to the unreliability of renewable resources, it was awful. Oh, wait a minute, it's NEVER happened. I guess I don't remember it.

More slight of hand. If you worked in the industry for so long, then you would know that every single megawatt of energy renewables are supposed to generate is backed up by a firm source (hydro, coal, gas etc), so when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining there is no interruption. Renewables are terribly unreliable, and if the system only relied on them, there would be constant problems

 

"What about the big outage in Texas a couple years ago?" In one word 'De-regulation".



Texas made that happen by refusing to follow Federal regulations governing power generation and transmission networks. Most of the US is interconnected through the power grid. There are several divisions to the US power grid. What this does is allow power to be transferred over a distance to an area that is demanding more power than they can locally generate. Notice the bright green area on Texas. That is an electric power island which is not connected to the rest of the US power grid. Literally not connected in the name of giving the Federal regulations the finger. Since power does not cross state lines Texas can ignore Federal regulations that require power generation facilities to be weatherproofed and other reliability measures.

It's the old story we hear from the crazies "Regulation bad". Believe it or not the power outage was caused by generation plants that had to be shut down due to frozen equipment. The facilities for transferring power from other areas are not available so there is a brown out. Privatizing public services sounds good if you are all about giving away the commons to corporations but in the end the people suffer.

 

Sorry I can't boil this down to a soundbite on a bumper sticker. Solar and wind make up about 20% of the power generated in Texas. I hate to bust the renewable haters bubble but the truth is spelled out below. Tex ass istan might seem like a paradise to some but others see it for what it is. Abject failure of certain policies based on beliefs and money not science. Notice that Florida is also isolated from the rest of the US grid.

Texas Interconnection - Wikipedia

2021 Texas power crisis - Wikipedia

 

Yeah Nuclear is great right up until it is not. Then the consequences are pretty dire and permanent. NOTE: For all intents and purposes hundreds of thousands of years might as well be permanent. A few places that don't think nuclear is great come to mind. Ask those folks (survivors) how nuclear is working for them.

Table of Nuclear Reactor Accidents - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (ieer.org)

Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents - Wikipedia

 

Yeah Nuclear is great right up until it is not. Then the consequences are pretty dire and permanent. NOTE: For all intents and purposes hundreds of thousands of years might as well be permanent. A few places that don't think nuclear is great come to mind. Ask those folks (survivors) how nuclear is working for them.

Table of Nuclear Reactor Accidents - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (ieer.org)

Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents - Wikipedia

Technology has vastly improved in the last years.

As to your next post, what's California's excuse for rolling brown outs etc? You politics bleed through in your posts, yet deregulation doesn't seem to really effect rankings. Florida ranks 5th in reliability in the nation in grid stability.

 

While the dialogue can be entertaining it also is predictable in the prejudices that are demonstrated as it pertains to energy policy. I can pick the 4 people on each end of spectrum that will be first to respond. Self awareness is a rare gift so I may fit in my own spectrum as well… who really knows.

Specific to the thread though….

The US and the world are not in a position from materials science and output to support the green tech revolution. The US alone needs to expand our supply of copper, cobalt, aluminum by a factor of three to 10, at the same time degloablization and war has taken between 30-50% of the global supply offline. FYI cobalt shortages are effecting machinery and parts because of its use in stainless steel. No time in human history have we doubled the material output sector in less than 10 years. This includes World War 2 and the following period of expansion without any of our current challenges.

So we can ignore that and assume we will magically come up with what we need and the people to build it all. Then we bump up against material science. Renewable power using wind and solar rely on it being sunny and windy… I know, big leap there. To maximize the power produced you need to have the end users close to the places that are windy and sunny. The US is actually the best located for solar with population across desert SW and Texas, compared to the rest of the world. Wind is another story, nobody likes to live where the wind blows a lot, and the scenic areas no one w wants to looks at windmills. That leaves us with transmission and resistance ( that is the funny horseshoe symbol in equations) and storage. Texas currently leads the country in storage capacity at 30 minutes of average usage last I saw documented. Our grid is old and corroding (think zincs fellas) which increases resistance and loss of generated power. Prudent use of resources should be massively expanding research into material science for turbine generation design to maximize hydro and gas ( we should all agree coal needs to go). Same for a durable and affordable storage mechanism. We should be replacing the oldest parts of the grid ( most in NE and industrial Midwest) which we have the technology to pull off and be ready for the next steps. The 10-30 million tons of copper and aluminum and 20,000 new linemen will be a challenge, but at least we don’t have to award a Nobel prize to pull it off.

And then there is nuclear….. We have shunned it for too long. We need to invest in technology to refine and reuse the waste. The reactor designs used elsewhere are multiple generations ahead of anything in the US. Specifically, liquid salt reactors from both an efficiency and safety factor. The trade off of some long term waste disposal will need to be evaluated against gas or not removing dams. No easy decisions, but we will always need a supply that can be brought on and offline in fractions of hour versus fractions of a day.

I am all for electrifying our economy. Show me the technology that will work at scale.

 

Use them like Lincoln Logs to build affordable housing.

 

Because it's 100% BS

Got any data supporting that? Or is that just something your feelings tell you? 🤣

 

If you go and read the actual original article, linked below, this doesn’t seem to be a big deal. Some solar farms are being upgraded early to get new inverters and the old panels and equipment are being refurbished and resold. The fact that solar farms are being upgraded like this (not abandoned) is a clear sign that the solar farms remain profitable. BFD.

US solar farms are aging. Is it time to begin repowering?

Some 23 GW of U.S. solar farms contain inverters that will need to be replaced over the next five years. But repowering might not unfold in the solar industry the same way it did for wind.

www.utilitydive.com

 

If they are profitable, why is that? Is it from there own merit, or huge subsidies?

 

Utility scale solar is cheap even when unsubsidized … in fact, don’t even need the military to protect it, no middle east oil fields involved

 

Technology is not necessarily the problem with nuclear energy. It’s natural disasters that they don’t seem to play well with.

 

Latest nuclear plant to come on line this year didn't quite go as planned. Glad I'm not a member of this utility.

"Georgia Power Co. announced Monday that Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, has completed testing and is now in commercial operation, seven years late and $17 billion over budget."

https://apnews.com/article/georgia-power-nuclear-reactor-vogtle-9555e3f9169f2d58161056feaa81a425

 

Best laid plans....

Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS)

The Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) started in the 1950s as a means to guarantee electric power to homes and industry in the Northwest. Well-meaning officials believed that building nuc

www.historylink.org

 

Yup, WPPSS got a court ruling that said the attorneys were wrong and the group could not combine, and the bonds were no good. Crooked!!! My mom lost money on state guaranteed bonds. Why are most public projects so far over budget? BART extension to San Jose is billions overrun. The high speed train to nowhere is 400% plus over budget, w no end in sight.

 

"Technology has vastly improved in the last years." This is true and yet we still do not have a plan for dealing with the radiological risks associated with the nuclear fuel cycle. Most used fuel is stored at the site where it was used.

And my question for the nuclear advocates/apologists is "If nuclear is so safe why are there so many radioactively contaminated places in the world?".

As for the comment on political stance goes .. Science is not a political party or stance. It is just the facts whatever they are. I base my information about the risks of nuclear power on experience gained and things observed while operating a nuclear power plant. Ever operate a nuclear power plant? Do you have any training on radiological controls?

I'm guessing the answer is no.

 

And my question for the nuclear advocates/apologists is "If nuclear is so safe why are there so many radioactively contaminated places in the world?"

The same reason there are all types of pollutants all over the world including the sites where they are mining all over the world for materials needed by Green Energy.

It would be nice if science didn't consider bias, but that isn't the world we live in. If you've been watching the news, there appear to be a lot of people that are very susceptible to thinking propaganda equals fact.

Cool that you have experience with old nuclear technology. I'm assuming you have zero experience with systems that haven't been built yet. . Fwiw, I fully understand old nuclear technology, too. But, many of us who looked into it do. It's been around a long time.

I believe the most reasonable thing to do is use all of the possible sources, and quit trying to make a subset of the options the winners artificially.

 

I can tell by the postings that there are a lot of people here that have zero clue about electronic components.

Anyone that has ever worked with inverters/converters, static exciters, scada systems, auxiliary controls (the list goes on), knows that 15 years is on the outside of the end of service life.

At about 7 years, components begin to fail (not a lot, but some). The rate of failure increases every year, and at around 12 years the failure curve starts to go almost straight up.

All of the components have a rated time between failure, and for the record, capacitors are a serious concern in critical systems. A dead cap, or caps, is probably what killed your home computer, the one that stopped working after 7 years. Its no different in any other electronics.

A fact of technology, is when your electronic equipment reaches about that magic age of 12 years, you had best have a plan already being implemented to replace it. By 15 years, there is no replacing components, because the engineering has already moved on, and the circuit boards just aren't available. You must install 'new' technology.

Whether the equipment is installed in a solar field or a steam plant is immaterial to the lifespan.

 

I keep seeing reports that there's already more generation than the grid can handle. Why continue to argue about additional generation methods until something is done about transmission or viable storage?

 

PGE just approved a 17% residential rate hike. That should cover some upgrades..
Also public comment period for offshore wind ends today, although today is the first I’ve heard about it.

 

I am a registered engineer and have worked on controls for going on 35 years now. So some of us deal with these issues and with controls and electrical equipment every day. We have some control systems operating now going on 30 yrs of service. Once the money is spent on SCADA or controls the owner is almost always very reluctant to replace it as long as it continues to function. They stock spare parts and keep old laptops with WIN 7 or XP and old software on it. The obsolescence is to some degree caused by the manufacturer upgrading programming and network software everytime the operating system changes. What always drives the upgrade is not having any option of repair. WIndows updates leave the old stuff in the dust. We write 6 or more SCADA upgrade plans a year. Maybe 20% actually get done because the cost cannot easily be justified in a City budget.

As far as dumpng nuke waste into a mine shaft goes. Where to start. Maybe you have heard of things like acquifers and groundwater. There is a bit more to it than finding a place no one cares about and dumping nuke waste there. You have to safely and securely transport it to the disposal site wherever it is. And you have to overcome the locals NIMBY reaction to having dangerous materials transported through and stored in their communities. You can build all the NUKE you can afford. It is the most expensive power you can buy. It takes 10 to 15 years to build a nuke plant. There still is no good solution to the waste that a plant will produce ... does not matter which generation of reactor they all produce radioactive waste. Some of it is dangerous for thousands of years. So yeah there are polluted places and there are permanently uninhabitable places. Why make more of the earth uninhabitable?

Energy Conservation can replace up to 30% of the demand. It is available almost immediately and does not require siting, designing, and building power stations and transmission networks. It just takes having an honest conversation about how to get it done. Sadly these conversations are dominated by moneyed interests busy protecting those they lobby for. We work with utilities and local governments to design into our projects any conservation measures that can be justified as cost savings.

 

Orsted cancels two New Jersey offshore wind projects, takes $4 billion writedown

 

Orsted cancels two New Jersey offshore wind projects, takes $4 billion writedown

Of course CNBC left out part of the story - unless I missed it. Other sources report that Orsted gets to keep the $1 billion in subsidy that the NJ governor granted. Residents are suing the company and the state claiming the subsidy was illegal. Why are there so many issues with the green agenda?

New Jersey residents challenge Orsted offshore wind farm's $1 billion subsidy

New Jersey residents have sued Danish renewable energy developer Orsted and the state over a tax break the company received to build a major offshore wind farm in the Atlantic, claiming the estimated $1 billion subsidy violates the state constitution.

www.reuters.com

 

They are passive but can fail. I have a failed solar array on my roof but the thing that failed was just the communication part, it still outputs the power. I have 37 panels that are about 9 years old. They already paid for themselves. What I did not like is that land use laws are so strict you can't build on much but it is perfectly fine to put a solar array on them. I got state law changed so you can no longer put them on high value farm soils; e.g. in the Valley.