Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

You remember your project. Most recent EE grads don't, or certainly don't understand it.

I guess it has... I remember buying tapes at Tower Records and there would be a rack with some CDs, nothing I was interested in. I still have 4 shelves full of CDs and a bunch of tapes. I left about 5 hernia's worth of vinyl with a friend in Massachusetts.

Some tech advances don't do much for me but I really like MP3s and Kindles. I'm getting too old to dead lift 400 lbs.

I'm sure the Raspberry Pi Foundation had a 'holy s*it!!!' moment. I think the Arduino people had a little better idea of what they were getting into. I've got an Atmel development board and I was messing around with the AVRs. Then the Arduinos came out. Neat package, ready to go.

At the time, I guess over 20 years ago, I looked at the PIC but I didn't care much for the instruction set. I'm an old Z-80 / 8048 type and the AVR was more familiar.

I was subscribing to Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar mag and they had projects for both. I don't subscribe any more but looking at the table of contents on their website they're still big on PIC32s.

Steam will come on almost instantly provided the boiler is nice and hot.

It'll keep going for more than a few minutes too if the fire bed is nice and hot. (I daresay that's easier with oil fired boilers!)

Keeping the boiler nice and hot just in case you need it uses a lot of energy.

Of course, you can predict demand to some extent - but not completely.

Andy

Ah, when load following, it may require _more_ steam, which requires additional fuel (pulverized coal, CH4, bunker fuel, etc), and there definitely will be a lag there.

How do you define "almost instant" and what is "nice and hot"? What operating pressure do you need for the turbines? As a licensed boiler engineer in MA I think you are overstating a bit.

around one second to three seconds

"Typical coal-based power plants operating at steam pressures of 170 bar and 570 °C run at efficiency of 35 to 38%, with state-of-the-art fossil fuel plants at 46% efficiency."

As a licensed boiler

Dont be silly. steam engines and steam turbines used in ships do not take a half an hour to go from cruise to flank speed.

Neither does a steam locomotive. The stored power is in the boiler. It is on tpa more or less instantaneously.

And if its well lagged it wont take a 'lot of power' to keep it hot,

Sure, but you are using a lot of fuel to keep it near operating pressure. Locomotive? Sure, but most other uses it is not needed.

Why would keeping something hot require energy? All it needs is insulation. MUCH easier in a fixed power station than a steam locomotive

Amazing. Just amazing.

No, its physics.

It does not take energy to maintain stored heat

That's why we insulate houses.

If a power plant is to kick in fast, to back up a shortage in a system, it has to be "hot standby spinning reserve", with the generators rotating at synchronous speed and a trickle of steam to keep net power at zero. That has momentum and can be ramped up in fast as needed. NG boilers are much faster than coal.

Stack gas is hot, so keeping up boiler pressure is a constant loss too.

Presumably a country-wide array of solar cells will fade in and out slowly as weather changes, as long as one doesn't lose a big transmission line. At least eclipses are predictable.

It took engineers over 100 years to evolve a reliable power system. A few greenies with law degrees can destroy it lot faster.

You'll appreciate that insulation when there's no power to run your heat pumps and you are running out of wood for the fireplace.

But based on what you are saying, our insulated house would not need a heating/cooling system. Bring it to temperature and it will hold forever.

Have you actually run boilers? How much insulation has to be on them? Give me facts, not theory. Tell me about the power plants you were in.

Of course there is some loss, but actually a steam turbine ramps up pretty quickly from static. As they were used extensively in ships fora a while

I dint know of the relative merits of running them disconnected or as 'spinning reserve'. What I do know is that the energy to run them either way is a small fraction of full power

Absolutely,. With gas prices back to pre covid levels my electricity bills are now 4 times what they were.

The only thing that has changed is that there is less fossil and nuclear power and more renewable on the grid

Go figure

Yeah, thats te EU. Here we import a small fraction from the USA. Mainly by product of their lumber industry. The EU can go f*ck itself. I am sick of the lies , corruption and duplicity and the German card being played all the time,

I built a house. I know all about heat calculations. How much you insulate depends on your fuel costs and the rate of interest. But that sort of cost benefit analysis seems beyond you.

My hot water boiler feeds an insulated tank. It stays hot all day without need to add heat.

There are forests being grown in the USA just to make wood chips for "renewable" power plants in europe.

Cold and hungry people will vote for people who will give them heat and food, but there are time lags in that feedback loop.

Evidence?

Some one did the calculations. The lumber business in the USA is MASSIVE. If they can sell on the waste as chippings for fuel, why not? And if these first they are growing are sustainable, then again, why not?

Either they are able to grow what they burn and the carbon cycle is closed, or they will run out of forests and solve the problem that way.

Not so very great lags as current European unrest is showing