OT: New National Grid Exec Director looks to Smart Grid to balance renewables output

What is lacking in this debate is any quantitative analysis. For example by 2025 Estimated peak demand on the grid Total available generating capacity when renewables are at their minimum Saving by industrial load shedding Saving by domestic load shedding whether by pricing or by smart appliances Estimated output from battery storage Difference.

Reply to
bert
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A friend contacted BG about their recent offer of free electricity Sat or Sun but although she pays by direct debit and has a smart meter she was refused because she has no internet connection.

Reply to
bert

Not if you are washing wool.

Reply to
bert

Mine may well be closer between 1/3 and 1/2 of my energy. The rest is mostly cooking which is entirely electric. I heat using very little electricity anyone, just the electric blanket and an equivalent called an electric throw that you use on armchair etc that both use very little energy.

It could well do with just electrical heating alone with the big surge in demand on the network during the ad breaks in major sporting events. The house temp wouldn?t even notice if the heating paused for that time.

Reply to
KYW

I think that there was a mention of using batteries to store the excess energy produced whilst the wind blows.

I'd be interested to hear the technical argument justifying that one.

Steve

Reply to
Steve B

Wow! Harry's ghost[1] truly *is* braindead isn't he? :-)

[1] When you killfile a troll, you still keep seeing their ghostly presence in others' postings. They're never truly killfiled until everyone else has added them to their own killfile filter lists. :-(
Reply to
Johnny B Good

The fact that domestic fluorescent luminaries designed for 20 watt or lower rated lamps were exempt from the power factor correction requirements of the larger wattage fluorescent fittings says it all really.

However, those regulations were drafted way back in the days before the loony greens began to exert undue influence upon politicians determined to win a popularity contest to get into "The House". In the absence of any sane level of pragmatism that once prevailed over the drafting of UK laws and regulations, who knows what might happen today? :-(

Reply to
Johnny B Good

On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 17:06:11 +0100, harry w= rote:

:

n there is a dearth of electricity.

Oh dear. Supply and demand. If you can't make enough electricity, put = the price up, people will use less. It's so simple a mosquito could und= erstand it.

-- =

The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of the oncoming train= .

Reply to
James Wilkinson

For other reasons, I have vowed to never use the wool cycle on my machine again.

Reply to
Andy Burns

What has power factor correction got to do with power generated?

Reply to
harry

Intrigued.

Chris

Reply to
Chris J Dixon

Their might have been a mention. There certainly wouldn't have been a fully worked out costed plan showing it to be profitable safe and pragmatic.

Actually, you would find a 20 year old episode of Star Trek more convincing.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Touché!

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

BTDT.

Since the potential output of renewables is zero. (dark cold windless winter night) and PV does f*ck all on a short winters day, you need to be ale to do without electricity for up to a week or more.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

It should not get humid with a heat pump or an older condenser type.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Wool shrinks due to mechanical action not temp so any agitation causes shrinkage. YMMV depending on the knit of the fabric.

I occidentally put a hand knitted jumper in once and when it came out it was doll clothing sized rather than a 12. That was a 30C wash but the synthetics setting. Daughter was not pleased.

Reply to
dennis

The suggestion was that people with solar panels on their roofs might also install storage batteries that would not only store excess solar power generated by the householder but also excess grid power when the wind was blowing strongly*, and feeding that power back to the grid when the wind wasn't blowing etc.

It has been discussed here recently.

These batteries would presumably be much like the Tesla Powerwall

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although at a miserable 6.4kWh that example is pretty useless for anything much. But Tesla are now offering a bigger battery for their cars, at 100kWh,
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so assume the Powerwall may eventually reach that capacity.

There are approximately 900,000 solar installations in the UK, although by no means all are domestic

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. Call it 1 million for simplicity and assume they're all domestic, and that all those installations have a 100kWh battery. That gives a total battery storage capacity of 100GWh. Assume the average UK grid consumption across the year is ~33GW. So these batteries would keep the UK's lights burning for ~3 hours on average, assuming no other sources of electricity. On a cold windless winter night grid consumption will be higher and they'd certainly all be flat by the morning.

But they'd possibly be useful for smoothing out the peaks and troughs caused by variable supply, along with load shedding, smart devices etc as discussed in this thread. But there would have to be a massive increase in numbers and/or battery capacity for them to act as primary grid storage.

Wind and solar are complimentary across the year. Solar is useless in winter but wind performs better, especially offshore. Wind drops a bit in summer, and solar picks up a bit. Capacity factors, aka load factors (why can't they just call it efficiency?) for 2015 as follows: Q1 % Q2 % Q3 % Q4 % Offshore wind 46.7 33.4 30.4 50.9 Solar 6.6 17.8 14.5 4.4

From

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Table 6.1 p.51

Reply to
Chris Hogg

Wind: How nice your panels are looking today! Solar: Why thank you, your blades are as slim as a young boys penis.

LOL!

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Unfortunately, very true. I thought I had heard the last from him when I killfiled him...

Reply to
F

The purpose of a smart meter is so that it can detect the electric car being charged and the missing notional petroleum revenue duty will just be added to your electricity bill.

Reply to
Andrew

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