OT: Is this absurd or absurd?

[Chris Hogg]

Seems bloody absurd to me!

[newshound]

Well they *could* use pure biodiesel. As long as they make sure they look after it and change the fuel filters regularly.

Back in the 60's CEGB South West Region had unmanned stations containing a Bristol Proteus (gas turbine) engine hooked up to an alternator for grid reinforcement.

From the Wikipedia entry on the Proteus: "Another use of the Proteus was for remote power generation in the South West of England in what were called "Pocket Power Stations".[7][8] The regional electricity board installed several 2.7MW remote operated generation sets for peak load powered by the Proteus. Designed to run for ten years many were still in use forty years later.[9] A working example is preserved at the Internal Fire - Museum of Power in West Wales."

[Chris Hogg]

The company that I used to work for in mid-Cornwall had their own coal fired power station for many years. But they also had a 5 MW Proteus generator on the outskirts of the village of Bugle, for dealing with occasions when demand exceeded the capacity of the coal-fired power station. Locals living nearby said it made a hell of a racket. Could still be there FAIK. See

about half way down. Came on stream in less than 5 minutes. I see it was powered by diesel, which I didn't know. I thought it was gas. Maybe it was converted at a later date.

But I have no quarrel with back-up power generation as such. After all, there are open-cycle gas turbines scattered around the country ATM, not often used because the closed-cycle gas turbines are more efficient. My gripe is the use of carbon rich diesel to back-up so-called green energy, when they could use a less-polluting fuel such as gas in a different system. Ridiculous!

[Brian Gaff]

Predictable as we all knew that so called renewables were fickle in when thy can produce power. What next huge lithium batteries perhaps?

Brian

[The Other Mike]

All the 'gas' turbines (Proteus/Avon/Olympus) for power generation installed in the 60's 70's and early 80's by the CEGB in the UK were fuelled with 28 second fuel oil, aka Avtur / Jet A1 / Kerosene. Capacities ranged from 15MW up to around 70MW.

The use of natural gas for generation only really took off around 1990 mainly in closed closed cycle form (some had an option to also run open cycle)

Within five years many of the 1960's and 70's gas turbines installations, both standalone and those associated with large coal and oil installations were closed or drastically reduced in capacity. Their method of fuelling never altered.

The gas turbines that remained (nearly all at existing coal and oil fired stations with one or two standalones) are used for black start capability. There are a number sited at nuclear sites that are used for for increased security of supply to reactor ancilliaries during a major grid system disturbance.

[Dave Liquorice]

Or better still locally produced bio-diesel. What also worries me is the effciency of 52 sets to produce 20 MW, is anything going to be done with the waste heat or exhaust gasses? Having said that this plant is only, in theory, run "in extremis" for just a few hours so making provision for use of waste heat/gasses from something so infrequent probably isn't worth while.

I guess being able to run sets flat out in 384kW steps and only have one of these smaller sets throttled might be better than haveing 10 x

2 MW sets and having to run one of those monsters at 50% or WHY.

A small set can probably start, sync up and and come on line, at part load, fairly quickly as well, a few tens of seconds? The previously throttled set (but now fully warmed up) can be quickly throttled up to full power. A cold set probably would take kindly to going from off to full power without warming up for a few minutes first.

[Vir Campestris]

ITYM combined cycle...

ANdy

[The Natural Philosopher]

combined cycle goes back YEARS.

60s IIRC.

suggest it was extant in the 50's and more or less fully developed in the 80s

The issue was that coal was cheaper than gas as it was heavily subsidised. Thatcher stopped all that and it was going to be nuclear, but then the interest rates went up, this making the 'running' costs of expensive nuclear plant uneconomic, and gas was discovered. So we went gas instead. Hence the dash for gas in the 90s.

[The Other Mike]

I did. (and the 1990 reference was only for the UK) They had been in use elsewhere for some time, Roosecote was the first one in the UK.

[whisky-dave]

Mega Farad capacitors and Graphene perhaps.

[The Natural Philosopher]

BUT..

"In terms of upscaling, the analysis showed the long time frame involved in upscaling the technology to a size of relevance for the power sector. Moving from the first industrial CCGT plants to a competitive, full-scale power sector technology in the

1990s took about 30 years."

CCGT was well known - like thorium reactors are today- but there was no economic case for actually developing them until cheap gas and failing coal and high interest rates combined to make them 'the cheapest way' to generate electricity.

Of course today, the cheapest way is no longer what decides anything.

[The Other Mike]

From your quote I found the source but don't have 100% confidence in it. CCGT's were in use in the US fifty years ago, with many full scale commercial installations in the US in the 1970's and in many other places during the 1980's (Japan, Thailand, Egypt to name but a few)

Not sure where this concept of upscaling comes from but 300 - 400MW units were in service in the USA in the late 70's, it's not a huge leap to the 500 - 600 MW units installed in the UK in the late 90's

The vast majority of what came to the UK in the 90's was off the shelf, dirt cheap, push the button and churn them out to a standard design, bugger the consequences and stuff the bank account with loadsamoney 'proven' technology.

In the 1980's gas was cheap in the UK, cheap because we had enough for over a century at current and projected usage. Then some money grabbing foreign c*nts came along, pissed it away and left us in the shit we are now.

[Windmill]

I wasn't living here at that time, but I've got a strong suspicion that our Glorious Leaders got themselves out of financial trouble by selling things off. And you can't blame the purchasers. I blame the people who sold the family silver.